At a ceremony held in Honolulu, Hawaii, GE Water & Process Technologies, a unit of General Electric Company, awarded Aqua Engineers and U.S. Army Garrison, Hawaii, with a 2007 Global ecomagination Leadership Award for an innovative partnership that produced outstanding environmental achievements.
Working together, Aqua Engineers and the U.S. Army implemented an advanced wastewater treatment and water reuse facility at the Schofield Barracks that will recycle over one billion gallons of water per year. The project will improve local water quality and will provide a sustainable new source of high quality, recycled water that can be reused for irrigation. GE’s Global ecomagination Leadership Award is given to organizations that demonstrate significant environmental and operational improvements, particularly in the areas of energy and water reductions.
“The Aqua Engineers and U.S. Army partnership demonstrated environmental leadership by investing in the Schofield Barracks wastewater treatment facility,” said Paul J. Schuler, western municipal growth leader, GE Water & Process Technologies. “The partnership’s efforts have improved efficiency and water quality at the facility, and support Hawaii’s goals of optimizing water usage and reducing environmental impacts in the region. We commend the partnership for implementing sustainable solutions that meet the needs of both the facility and the environment. Aqua Engineers’ innovative approach to saving water is what ecomagination is all about.”
In 2004, Aqua Engineers, a water and wastewater operations and management company in Hawaii, entered a 50-year agreement with the U.S. Army to own, operate, and upgrade the Schofield Barracks wastewater treatment facility. At the time, the 3.2 million gallons per day (12,112 m3/d) facility’s treatment processes needed to be upgraded to R-1 quality effluent for reuse while increasing plant capacity to 4.2 mgd, ensuring that it could cost-effectively meet ongoing regulatory demands. Aqua Engineers worked with the U.S. Army to upgrade and expand the Schofield Barracks Wastewater facility with environmentally sustainable solutions.
Aqua Engineers upgraded the Schofield Barracks Wastewater facility with GE’s ecomagination-certified ZeeWeed Membrane Bioreactor (MBR). The advanced wastewater treatment system combines rugged hollow-fiber, ultrafiltration membranes with biological processes resulting in superior treated effluent quality, a compact environmental footprint, reduced chemical consumption and manpower requirements and also helps the site conserve and manage its water resources in an environmentally sound manner. GE’s ZeeWeed MBR also helps the partnership recycle wastewater to the high-quality standards that are required to support the military base’s irrigation needs, which dramatically reduces its demand on Hawaii’s limited potable water supplies.
Source: GE Water & Process Technologies