Riverhead’s innovative wastewater reuse project was recognized by the American Council of Engineering Companies of New York with a top award last month at the organization’s annual Engineering Excellence Awards Gala.
H2M Architects and Engineers, the firm that designed and implemented a $24 million facility upgrade at the Riverhead plant submitted eight projects in the council’s award competition this year and received its top award for the Riverhead project.
With the upgrade, the plant, originally built in the 1930s, became Long Island’s first water resource recovery facility, capable of diverting up to 500,000 gallons per day of treated effluent from the Peconic River to irrigation uses on the adjacent county-owned golf course as well as on the sewer district property itself.
The town had to determine what the standards would be, prove the standards could be met, and get the standards approved by the regulating agency, all before the project could be moved to the full scale design phase, H2M said in a press release.
Last year, the Water Environment Federation, a nonprofit technical and educational organization representing water quality professionals around the world, honored the Riverhead facility with one of three project excellence awards.
Riverhead’s facility has also received accolades from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which in 2015 honored Riverhead Sewer District superintendent Michael Reichel with an environmental champion award. Reichel advocated for the reuse project for three decades.
The plant accepts waste by pipeline from properties within the Riverhead Sewer District and by truckload from properties in the towns of Riverhead and Southampton that are served by private septic systems. As a result of the upgrade, it can treat up to 1.5 million gallons of wastewater per day to the technological limit of under 4 milligrams of nitrogen per liter. Using membrane technology and high-dose ultraviolet disinfection, the plant treats for a host of other pathogens as well, including viruses.
Using some of the effluent for irrigation reduces nitrogen-loading in the Peconic Estuary by 1.4 tons per year. Nitrogen pollution contributes to harmful algal blooms and increases aquatic plant growth in water bodies, which in turn consume too much oxygen. That can deplete oxygen to levels that cannot support marine life, resulting in massive fish kills like the ones seen in the Peconic in 2015.
The upgrade and reuse project was completed in 2016 with financial assistance from federal, state and county governments.
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