Florida water reclamation facility wins award

• Hillsborough County's Northwest Regional plant is the tenth Phelps award winner in 14 years to use Severn Trent's TETRA filtration technology

FORT WASHINGTON, PA, Aug. 21, 2007 -- The Northwest Regional Water Reclamation Facility in Hillsborough County, Fla., received the Florida Water Environment Association's 2007 Earle B. Phelps Award in the advanced wastewater treatment plant category. The award was presented at the annual Florida Water Resources Conference held in Orlando. The plant's deep bed filtration process, which removes total suspended solids (TSS) from the wastewater system, is provided by the TETRA® Denite® tertiary filtration system from Severn Trent Services. Ten of the last 14 winners of the Phelps Award have utilized the TETRA DeepBed™ technology for their filtration needs.

The runner-up in the advanced water treatment plant category was The Fiesta Village Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant in Lee County, Fla., which uses the TETRA Denite system for simultaneous nitrate-nitrogen and TSS removal. The Fiesta Village plant has won nine previous Phelps Awards.

The Earle B. Phelps Award, established in 1964, honors outstanding treatment plants in Florida that have maintained the highest removal of pollutants. Awards are given in three categories: advanced treatment; advanced secondary facilities; and secondary treatment facilities. Plant size also is considered, with nominees being evaluated against facilities of the same relative size and treatment type.

Hillsborough County's seven advanced wastewater treatment plants provide high quality water to more than 120,000 customers, collect and treat wastewater from more than 96,000 customers and distribute reclaimed water to more than 7,000 customers. Reclaimed water involves taking wastewater from treatment plants, treating it and making the resulting high quality water available to homes and businesses for new, beneficial uses such as watering plants and lawns. Using reclaimed water for such applications reduces the demand for potable water, which is more costly to treat.

The TETRA Denite system is a fixed-film biological denitrification process that also serves as a deep bed filtration system capable of removing suspended solids to virtually any final effluent requirement. The system integrates well with other plant treatment processes to provide superior total nitrogen and phosphorous removal. Denite is used as the final treatment step in the total nitrogen removal process to help facilities meet stringent discharge limits.

Severn Trent Services, with global headquarters in Fort Washington, Pa., is a leading supplier of water and wastewater treatment solutions. The company's broad range of products and services is concentrated around disinfection, instrumentation and filtration technologies, contract operating services and state-of-the-art residential metering products and services.

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