This manual is intended to provide guidance and criteria for the design and selection of small-scale wastewater treatment facilities. It provides both the information necessary to select, size, and design such wastewater treatment unit processes, and guidance to generally available and accepted references for such information. For the purpose of this manual, small-scale wastewater treatment systems are those with average daily design flows less than 379 000 liters per day (L/d) or 100,000 gallons per day (gal/d), including septic tanks for flows less than 18 900 L/d (5000 gal/d), small prefabricated or package plants for flows between 18 900 L/d (5000 gal/d) and 190 000 L/d (50,000 gal/d), and larger prefabricated treatment systems with capacities of no more than 379 000 L/d (100,000 gal/d).

These guidelines have been developed to provide state-of-the-art and simple instructions for designing and operating constructedwetlands for small wastewater flows. They have been field-tested and shown to be effective ; however, the should be considered as only "guidelines", not standards.