DENVER, CO, Nov. 6, 2013 -- The city of Berryville, Ark., recently selected CH2M HILL for a five-year contract to manage the operations and maintenance of the city's wastewater treatment plant.
The selection followed a CH2M HILL study of the wastewater system as the city grappled with unpredictable treatment costs and concerns for long-term protection of local waters.
Since assuming management of the Berryville plant on Sept. 1, CH2M HILL has been training former city staff who have transitioned to company employment and implementing a suite of management systems relating to safety, laboratory analysis, process sampling and control, maintenance, and general regulatory compliance.
Following the study, city officials and representatives from the Tyson chicken processing factory -- which produces about 60 percent of the waste treated by the city -- negotiated a new s ewer-use agreement that includes updated criteria for phosphorus, biochemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids (tss), and other factors important to the treatment process. Tyson agrees to pay a surcharge to cover additional treatment costs if it is unable to meet those criteria. The city and CH2M HILL officials both say Tyson has been extremely cooperative and proactive in developing and implementing the operations agreement.
"In the past few years, Berryville has spent over $3 million upgrading our plant to meet new limits on our discharge permit and at times has had problems meeting these limits for phosphorus," Berryville Mayor Tim McKinney says. "The business of wastewater treatment has become very technical over the past several years, and we expect that trend to continue. With CH2M HILL's expertise, cooperation from Tyson and Berryville's commitment to meeting or exceeding what is required of us, we will become a model of how a wastewater plant in a small town with a large user such as Tyson should be operated."
About CH2M HILL
Headquartered near Denver, Colorado, USA, employee-owned CH2M HILL is a global leader in consulting, design, design-build, operations, and program management for government, civil, industrial and energy clients. The firm’s work is concentrated in the areas of water, transportation, environmental, energy, facilities and resources. With US$7 billion in revenue and 28,000 employees, CH2M HILL is an industry-leading program management, construction management and design firm, as ranked by Engineering News-Record and named a leader in sustainable engineering and environmental services by Verdantix. The firm was named Water Company of the Year at the 2012 Global Water Awards. Visit us at www.ch2mhill.com,www.ch2mhillblogs.com/water, twitter.com/access_water and facebook.com/ch2mhillwater. Search for jobs at www.ch2mhill.jobs.
###
