Monmouth County Reclamation Center Breaks Ground on Leachate Pretreatment Facility

Representatives of Monmouth County, N.J., Natural Systems Utilities (NSU) and Middlesex Water Co. (MWC) marked the groundbreaking for a new leachate pretreatment facility at the Monmouth County Reclamation Center in Tinton Falls, N.J. NSU, its wholly owned subsidiary, Applied Water Management (AWM), and MWC formed a partnership to design, construct and operate the facility under an initial 15-year contract with Monmouth County.

"A long term public private partnership with local New Jersey companies, NSU-AWM and Middlesex, enables the County to have in place a state-of-the-art system to manage high strength wastewater with long-term reliability, flexibility and designed to accommodate future regulations," said Monmouth County's Reclamation Center Superintendent Richard Throckmorton.

The project includes a new wastewater treatment plant using an advanced membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology, pump station and pipeline that connects to the local sewer utility. The system will employ this advanced technology to provide a very high level of treatment that helps protect the environment by removing over 500,000 lb of nitrogen and over 1,000 lb of heavy metals from the waste stream every year. Currently, the leachate is hauled off-site by more than 35 trucks a day. The elimination of this truck traffic will improve the quality of life for the local community and reduce air pollution, including thousands of pounds per day of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Using an advanced MBR reduces the amount of untreated leachate hauled off-site, significantly lowers operating costs to the county, and positively impacts the environment," said Richard Cisterna, executive vice president of NSU-AWM. "NSU-AWM has decades of experience in designing, building and operating MBR systems in New Jersey and other states and are proud to be partnering with Monmouth County on this important project."

Source: Middlesex Water Co.