The US Environmental Protection Agency honored the first WaterSense Partners of the Year for their water conservation efforts. A program involving Seattle-area water utilities was among those honored.
“EPA commends these partners for being blue ribbon winners in water efficiency,” said Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA’s assistant administrator for water. “These water stars are helping WaterSense transform the way Americans view and value our most precious liquid asset and, as a result, we are saving more and wasting less for future generations.”
More than 1000 individuals, companies and organizations are involved in EPA’s WaterSense program. Four were honored for their exceptional performance:
- Promotional Partner of the Year: The Saving Water Partnership
- Manufacturer Partner of the Year: Kohler Co.
- Retailer and Distributor Partner of the Year: Ferguson
- Irrigation Partner of the Year: Timothy Malooly of Shorewood, Minn.
The Saving Water Partnership is a collaboration between Seattle Public Utilities and 17 participating local water utilities. Kohler Co. is a leading bathroom and kitchen product manufacturer. Ferguson is one of the country’s largest wholesale distributors of plumbing supplies. Timothy Malooly is a WaterSense irrigation partner and president of two Minnesota-based irrigation firms: Irrigation Consultants & Control and Irrigation By Design.
The 2008 Partners of the Year helped advance the WaterSense mission through a range of activities demonstrating creativity and collaboration, and promoting water efficiency from New York City’s Times Square to the Minnesota Zoological Garden. Three of the winning organizations have also worked together to educate plumbers and consumers on the benefits of WaterSense labeled products.
The WaterSense Partner of the Year awards were presented at the WaterSmart Innovations Conference and Exposition in Las Vegas, Nev., the first national water-efficiency conference for an interdisciplinary audience. For more information on the WaterSense program, visit www.epa.gov/watersense. WW
Water Company Selects Asset Management Software
The Baton Rouge Water Company in Louisiana has selected Trimble® Fieldport® software to enhance its utility field operations. The software is an automated Geographic Information System (GIS)-based field work and asset management solution.
With the implementation of software, Baton Rouge is optimizing its processes for asset management, maintenance, repair operations, and maintenance work planning and scheduling. In addition, an enhanced management reporting functionality is expected to help the utility department improve its asset performance, reliability and ensure the right resources are available to the field worker at the right time.
The company will work toward restructuring other critical work processes such as customer field service, GIS mapping and tracking, field inspection, inventory planning and field data collection.
“The Baton Rouge Water Company is committed to better serving the needs of our community and we believe that Trimble Fieldport will help pave the way for increased efficiencies in our asset management and field service activities,” said Patrick J. Kerr, president of the Baton Rouge Water Company.
Trimble’s Fieldport software is currently used by electric, gas, water and wastewater utilities throughout the U.S. to serve millions of residential and commercial customers nationwide.
For more information about Trimble’s utility enterprise solutions, visit: www.trimble.com/ufs. WW
World’s Largest UV Disinfection Facility Begins Construction
The world’s largest ultraviolet disinfection facility has begun construction. A joint venture of Malcolm Pirnie/CH2M Hill is serving as the construction management team for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s Catskill-Delaware Ultraviolet Disinfection Facility.
Located in Westchester County, NY, the facility will use 56 low-pressure, high-output UV reactors to treat an average of 1.3 billion gallons of water daily and will have capacity to treat more than 2 billion gallons daily. Scheduled for completion in September 2014, this single facility will triple the North American drinking water UV capacity.
“This is a landmark facility within the drinking water industry,” said Paul Whitener, CH2M Hill’s project manager. “We are proud to be partnering with Malcolm Pirnie and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection to provide high-quality drinking water to the DEP’s 9 million customers.”
New York City has the largest unfiltered surface water supply in the world, delivering more than 1.3 billion gallons of water daily to 9 million residents in New York City and the upstate area. Through gravity flow, the Catskill and Delaware aqueducts meet the majority of this demand.
Other teaming partners include URS. The project designer is a joint venture of Hazen and Sawyer/CDM. WW
Utility Plans Filter Upgrades
Wright-Pierce, a New England provider of water, wastewater and infrastructure engineering services, was selected by a Northern New England utility to upgrade its slow sand filtration water treatment facility. Wright-Pierce recently completed the upgrade design, and will oversee the installation of an innovative pretreatment system that will minimize the formation of disinfection by products (DBP), a major cause of compromised water quality.
The Magnetic Ion Exchange (MIEX®) pretreatment process removes dissolved organic carbon, which are naturally occurring chemicals and a precursor for disinfection byproduct formation. The upgraded facility will enable the utility to comply with the federal Clean Water Act and provide safe drinking water to the community.
After nearly two years of studies, design work for the facility concluded in August. Construction of the project was to begin in late October and is scheduled for completion in June 2009. Once completed, the facility will be the first of its kind in New England to use the MIEX treatment process.
The MIEX® Process, developed by Orica Watercare, uses a continuous ion exchange process capable of achieving new standards in water quality. Benefits of the process include significantly less waste residuals, color removal, reduced chlorine demand for disinfection, and significant reductions in disinfection by-product formation. Adapting this technology upstream of a slow sand filtration process is an effective solution to organics removal.
“Creativity is required to help smaller communities design water treatment systems that work for their facilities; systems that provide the best method to achieve the highest water quality and meet new regulations.” said Jeff Musich, P.E., Vice President of Wright-Pierce. “We are thrilled to be selected to design and construct this state of the art water treatment facility. The district’s water quality will meet stringent federal and state requirements, and consumers should notice improved taste and reduced color.” WW
City Begins Phase II of Waterways Project
Black & Veatch has been selected to provide engineering services and program and construction management services for Phase II of the Toledo Waterways Initiative.
Phase II is part of a 15-year, $450 million initiative designed to control combined sewer overflows by upgrading the aging sewer system and wastewater treatment facilities in the city of Toledo, OH.
Phase II is the final 10 years of the waterways initiative and includes design development and implementation of 25 projects. Among the projects are installation of separate sanitary and storm sewers, construction and optimization of storage facilities, and modification or installation of additional flow regulators to address the combined sewer areas.
Black & Veatch recently completed Phase I of the initiative, ahead of schedule and under budget. During this phase, major improvements were made at the Bay View Wastewater Treatment Plant which included construction of the largest ballasted flocculation facility in North America, and doubling the plant’s treatment capacity to 400 million gallons daily. WW
