The Rock Creek Clean Water Service treatment facility in Rock Creek, Ore., received the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s 2006 National Clean Water Act Recognition Award in the operations and maintenance category for large facilities with advanced treatment.
The facility also recently earned a 2006 Region 10 EPA award. The EPA recognizes outstanding achievements in water quality through Clean Water Act recognition awards on a yearly basis.
The Hillsboro Argus reported the award was a relief from the current problems facing the Rock Creek treatment, which recently experience power outages and streamwater backflows.
The facility provides wastewater treatment for Hillsboro, Beaverton, Aloha and unincorporated Washington County.
Recently the facility instituted an improved process, unified fermentation and thickening, to remove phosphorus from wastewater with a combination of biological, chemical and physical processes. The new process has led to 85 to 95 percent removal of soluble phosphorus, saving Clean Water Services annual operating costs in excess of $100,000.
The process the amount of alum added to the wastewater, thereby reducing aluminum and its salts into the biosolids, and lower dissolved solids in the cleaned wastewater, which is beneficial to the environment.
Source: Hillsboro Argus