When the Western Carolina Regional Sewer Authority adopted a new name in 2008, the result reflected a focus that had been a high priority for the district, which serves all of South Carolina’s Greenville County and parts of four other counties.
As Renewable Water Resources — ReWa — the utility focused on its involvement in environmentally sensitive projects. Leaders wanted to make sure the 400,000 residential and business customers recognized that besides wastewater treatment, ReWa is involved in renewable energy (methane capture), water reuse and biosolids recycling.
ReWa also wanted to remind people that it was one of the first organizations to become a certified partner in the Wildlife and Industry Together (WAIT) program, launched more than a decade ago by the South Carolina Wildlife Federation.
Lots of green space
ReWa has been part of WAIT since 1998. The partnership came about when an SCWF official asked his friend Dale Looper, a now-retired ReWa customer service manager and avid outdoorsman, if the district would consider joining the program.
“They knew we had the kind of green space at our facilities that would make us a good candidate to participate,” says Blake Visin, information technology manager and the utility’s WAIT coordinator. With nine treatment plants and 310 miles of sewer trunk lines under its umbrella, ReWa owns land that can be ideal wildlife habitat. Managers were eager to join the program, which now lists many major industries and utilities among its partners.
In the early years, the WAIT projects included providing food for wildlife and installing wood duck and bluebird houses. Working with right-of-way crews, the district has established a number of food plots at its treatment facilities to help a wide range of wildlife. Crops grown at treatment plant sites include oats, wheat, peas and turnip greens.
“We are trying to maintain food sources for turkey, deer, rabbit — anything you might consider game,” Visin says. Although he and many others involved in the program are hunters, the ReWa facilities are all off-limits to hunting. The goal is to provide wildlife refuge areas. “We’re trying to encourage wildlife growth and habitat so people can view them in their natural environment,” Visin says.
Changing focus
With that in mind, ReWa has added a new focus in the past two years. “Lately it’s become a lot more about habitat management,” Visin says. That means taking a new approach to grounds maintenance. Speaking from the Mauldin Road Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenville, Visin observes, “Until lately we mowed up to 100 acres weekly. Everything was prim and proper. That seemed great until we stepped back and looked at it in a different way.”
It became clear that the manicured grounds did not fit well with encouraging wildlife. “We found that the 35-foot buffer we were leaving between the mowed fields and the tree line is where 75 percent of the wildlife lived,” Visin says.
So the staff decided to do less mowing and allow much of the open space to grow back as native meadows. Now the narrow buffer is between the meadows and the physical plant. “The decision to mow the meadows just once a year had a double payoff,” Visin says. “We’re increasing the amount of habitat, and we’re also cutting our maintenance expense and fuel consumption in half.”
The benefits to wildlife have been tangible. The turkey population on the grounds has doubled, the rabbit population is “through the roof,” and coyotes are prospering, as well. “The one thing our operators are concerned about is that they are seeing many more snakes come out of the fields,” Visin says.
Public demonstration
The efforts to provide food and habitat have helped demonstrate the utility’s environmental focus to the public. A new 1.4-mile walking/nature trail being developed at the Gilder Creek treatment plant will add to that effort. Local Boy Scout Jay Rex has taken on the trail’s development of as an Eagle Scout project, overseen by David Collyer, lead operator at the plant. Collyer and his staff made sure Rex and his fellow Scouts had access to the grounds and had a safe environment to work in.
ReWa officials are also wrapping up an agreement with the Greenville County Recreation District to extend its Swamp Rabbit Trail through the agency’s Mauldin Road site, along an existing trial that follows the Reedy River. Hikers will be able to look up the hill from the river bank and see ReWa facilities in addition to the habitat and the wildlife the district has fostered through its WAIT participation.
Visin says the lead operators and their crews “are my eyes in the field. They tell me what’s working and where it works best. They know their sites best. You can put seed in the ground anywhere but they’re the ones who keep a finger on the pulse of what’s working.”
