Stormwater Treatment For New Waste Plant Improves More Than Water
Waste Management Inc. states treatment improves processes and profits
Portland, OR — Stormwater Management, Inc., an innovator in effective stormwater treatment technology, announced today that a stormwater filtration installation has helped improve not only the water quality but potential profitability of the Waste Management Inc. Plant Atkinson facility near Atlanta, Ga.
According to Lee Nelson, District Manager for Waste Management, the company recently erected a new $3.4 million, four-sided, state-of-the art building at its Atkinson facility. As part of the new building construction, Waste Management installed the Stormwater Management StormFilter® to handle runoff from 4.2 acres of impervious surface on the 12.6 acre site.
The second building allowed the company to split its municipal solid waste (MSW) and construction and demolition debris into two separate operations, each handled by one of the buildings at the site. The new building makes MSW collection quieter, more visually appealing and contains odors better than the traditional three-sided building. The new building boosts the facility's MSW output to 2500 tons per day. The expansion also allows the existing three-sided building to now be dedicated to C&D collection and distribution.
"Breaking up our waste streams further reduces costs because we can now send construction debris to an unlined landfill," said Ray Chewning, Waste Management's senior engineer at the southern group level for stormwater management.
The two buildings also provided the opportunity to divide water output into two streams waste water that requires municipal sewage treatment and stormwater that could be handled differently, according to Chewning.
"The water was cross-contaminating, which made us treat everything at the facility as waste water," said Chewning. "Separating the stormwater runoff from waste water reduces our cost of treatment and reduced any environmental concerns."
Splitting the water output has also resulted in cost savings at the Atkinson Facility. "As part of our planning two years ago, we looked at how to use stormwater technology to reduce our operational costs," said Nelson. "Plant Atkinson storm and waste water went into a detention pond that then had to be treated in the municipal sewer at a higher cost than stormwater treatment. Splitting the two treatments offers us a significant operational savings."
"It's great to see a company like Waste Management utilizing stormwater treatment to realize a return on investment financially and ecologically," said Calvin Noling, the director of industrial business at Stormwater Management, Inc.
SOURCE: Stormwater360