DC Water Breaks Ground on $1.4bn Environmental Projects

The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) in the US will begin work on two massive environmental projects worth $1.4bn at the Blue Plains advanced wastewater treatment plant.

The work will involve the construction of enhanced nutrient removal facilities to reduce the amount of nitrogen in effluent to meet new US EPA and Chesapeake Bay programme goals.

DC Water will also become the first company in North America to install thermal hydrolysis and anaerobic digesters to turn waste into electricity.

The digesters consist of vessels that pressure-cook solids left over after wastewater treatment to produce 13MW of combined heat and power-generated electricity.

These vessels can also ingest food scraps, fats and grease to generate power.

The Blue Plains treatment plant processes an average of 370 million gallons of wastewater per day.