What is Wastewater Treatment?
A Wastewater Treatment plant (WWTP) takes sewage or otherwise contaminated water and cleans it so that it can be reused or released into the environment. This is accomplished with well-proven biological and chemical processes that enable cost effective treatment of sewage and other wastewater streams.
How do we use it?
Every drain in the building, be it a floor drain, sink, urinal or toilet, flows into our treatment plant. Technically called a flat-plate membrane bioreactor, the WWTP contains beneficial bacteria that “eat” our waste and break it down so that we can filter out the clean water with banks of filter cartridges. This clean water is then run through a carbon filter and sterilized with ultraviolet (UV) light before being stored in a 310,000 L tank beneath our parking lot for reuse and fire suppression.
How does it make us more sustainable?
The ERC earned every available LEED credit for water savings. The integrated nature of the water cycle in our building makes the most of every drop of water that we harvest from the local water table, while ensuring that the water is healthy, clean and available when needed. Instead of using city water and then dumping sewage into aging municipal infrastructure that is near capacity, we handle our water needs entirely on site.
