A decade or two ago it might have been hard to reconcile using the word “green” to describe an oil refinery, paper mill or car factory. Yet today big manufacturers, even in what many might think of as “dirty” industries, are doing remarkable things to beautify their sites and limit their environmental footprints.
Water treatment plants, on the other hand, have been largely green by definition. When your raw material is lake or well water and the end product is drinking water that has to please consumers and meet all sorts of government standards, environmental responsibility pretty much comes with the territory.
Yet green operation and sustainability are high on the agenda for water utilities around the country. They’re doing the extras to set an example for their communities and win their customers’ confidence.
Many features
In each issue of Water System Operator, we profile one or two plants that are doing an exemplary job on the green front. Looking around the industry we see water plants sprouting renewable energy facilities like wind turbines and solar panels (the March/April issue highlighted the Canoe Brook Water Treatment Plant in New Jersey, where 400 solar panels float on a reservoir).
We find plants earning Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification under a U.S. Green Building Council program. There are plants with green roofs and grounds that display elaborate native plantings, walking trails and wildlife areas.
The Willamette River Water Treatment Plant in Wilsonville, Ore., profiled in this issue, has attractive architecture and a park setting with landscaping that includes a fountain. It’s so nice that people have graduation and wedding pictures taken there.
Small is beautiful
Now, some of these plants have elaborate green spaces and green technologies because they have big budgets or because the sustainability projects were part of multimillion-dollar new construction or renovations. Not every facility can afford these showcase projects.
So we’re not solely interested in the large and flashy green features. We’d also like to know about things operators at smaller plants are doing to make their facilities more sustainable. Maybe it’s the operating team that created a passive solar heating system for a maintenance building.
Or a group of operators who teamed up on a variety of process improvement projects that cut energy consumption by a significant amount. Or a few co-workers who organized a volunteer project to establish a prairie or stand of wildflowers and put up bird nesting houses on what was once a plain-looking field behind a plant.
Keep us informed
Projects like those may not show up in the national news, but we’d like to know about them, so we can share them with WSO readers. That’s because they’re the kinds of projects almost any operating team can undertake, even on an extremely tight budget. Little improvements at many plants add up to meaningful impact on the environment and send a great message about the quality of the people who work in this industry.
So, let us know about your sustainability projects, big or small. Send me a note to editor@wsomag.com. I promise to respond, and we will highlight as many projects on our pages as possible.
