The WEF Sustainable Utilities Task Force presents a resource for utility managers seeking examples of succesful sustainability practices

Using A Management Systems Approach to Achieve Sustainability For Wastewater Utilities

Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority
Camden, NJ

Increasing population, increasing environmental pressures, aging infrastructure, aging workforce and increasing resistance to taxes require wastewater utilities to be increasingly more efficient and versatile to:
− meet their environmental obligations
− sustain their infrastructure, and
− still meet their obligations to their ratepayers
The Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA), operators of a 80 million gallon per day wastewater treatment plant in Camden, NJ, found that implementation of an Environmental Management System (EMS) was absolutely essential to meeting both its environmental and financial goals, and obligations. Specifically, the CCMUA’s Environmental Management System has enabled it to:
• sustain, and optimize, its water quality performance
• sustain, and optimize, its air quality performance
• sustain, and optimize, its infrastructure
• establish, and sustain, rate stability
• sustain, and protect, wetlands within Camden County
• sustain, and capture, institutional knowledge
• sustain, and improve, relationships with regulatory agencies, neighbors and other interested stakeholders
This paper will demonstrate why the CCMUA implemented its Environmental Management System (EMS), provide a description of how the EMS was developed and then explain in detail how the CCMUA’s aforementioned environmental and economic sustainability goals were achieved through the EMS.


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Posted: July 23rd, 2010 | Filed under: 500K-1M, Sanitary Sewer, Stormwater, Waste Water Treatment | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

USING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS TO REDUCE ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND ENERGY COSTS

Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority
Camden, NJ

The twin problems of steadily rising energy costs and global warming have made the issue of energy conservation a very high priority for both regulatory agencies and water and wastewater utilities. More and more utilities are realizing that a systematic approach for addressing their energy challenges is the best way to ensure that energy issues are continually addressed on an ongoing basis. Energy management is also at the heart of efforts across the entire sector to ensure that utility operations are sustainable in the future. Working closely with a number of utilities and the Water Environment Federation, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) is proactively addressing this issue and has developed an energy management guide entitled Ensuring a Sustainable Future: An Energy Management Guidebook for Wastewater and Water Utilities that provides a detailed, step by step, management systems approach to reducing energy consumption and energy cost. This paper will describe the USEPA’s new Energy Management guidebook and discuss how water and wastewater utilities can use this guidebook to reduce their energy costs. In addition, the paper will also include a case study example describing how the Camden County (NJ) Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA) used an Environmental Management System, akin to the Plan-Do-Check-Act systematic approach set forth in the USEPA’s Energy management guidebook to realize significant reductions in energy consumption at its wastewater treatment plant, and corresponding cost savings for its ratepayers.


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Posted: July 23rd, 2010 | Filed under: 500K-1M, Sanitary Sewer, Stormwater, Waste Water Treatment | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »