AlexRenew

In April the Potomac Watershed Roundtable met at AlexRenew in Alexandria, Virginia. In the morning meeting Karen Pallansch, the Chief Executive Officer of Alexander Renew spoke about AlexRenew, one of the most advanced waste water treatment plants in the United States. AlexRenew has more than 100 employees at their advanced waste water treatment plant that covers 35-acres in Alexandria. AlexRenew calls their plant a “Water Resource Recovery Facility” because it is far advanced of the sewage treatment plants of the past. The plant processes about 13 billion gallons of wastewater each year into clean water and reusable resources- Class A Biosolids.

During the past eleven years under the leadership of Ms. Pallansch, the waste water treatment plant was rebranded Alex Renew and saw significant treatment upgrades. Ms. Pallansch oversaw the implementation of a strategy that incorporated a successful public-developer partnership, creating a neighborhood from an area that once served as a City of Alexandria landfill. The new site, which opened in 2016, includes a LEED Platinum Environmental Center with an educational lobby. The building uses AlexRenew’s reclaimed water and is powered in part by solar energy and is where our meeting was held. Next to the building is an Envision Platinum Nutrient Management Facility topped with a multipurpose artificial turf field operated and maintained by The City’s Parks Department.

In short, AlexRenew is an innovative and inoffensive (it really doesn’t smell) waste water treatment plant and I had wanted to tour the facility since I read about it in Rose George’s excellent book “ The Big Necessity; the unmentionable world of Human Waste and why it matters.” I was not disappointed. You can take a virtual tour or sign up for an actual tour.

Before the tour Ms. Pallansch briefly spoke to the group about the history and operations of Alex Renew and in broad strokes of how they will help Alexandria meet the state legislative mandated timeline for solving the combined sewer overflow problem in Alexandria. There is an area of the City, mostly around Old Town that has a Combined Sewer System. This combined system is a piped sewer system in which there is one pipe that carries both sanitary sewage and stormwater to the local wastewater treatment plant. This was how sewer systems were commonly built in the days when sanitation was simply moving sewage out of the city to the rivers and streams. Back then one piping system was cheaper and adequate for the job.

However, today when sewage is treated by waste water treatment plants, the rain water that falls in the street and enters the storm water drains is combined with the sanitary waste water entering the sewers from homes and businesses. The combined flow can overwhelm the waste water treatment plant. So, to protect the sewage system as a whole, the combined sewage and rainfall is released into the local creeks in a controlled and planned fashion out of the “Combined Sewer Overflows” which are release locations permitted and monitored by the regulators.

Now Alexandria is under mandate from the state legislature to eliminate this problem by 2025. Though the state issued a mandate, they did not offer any funding to Alexandria or the right solution. In order to accomplish this, Alexandria has transferred ownership of the outfalls and the interceptor lines (the sewer mains transporting to the raw sewage to the treatment plant) to AlexRenew.

AlexRenew has taken the lead and based on feedback received during the Stakeholder Group process, they developed a plan that includes building a tunnel system with:

• Storage tunnels 
• Conveyance tunnels 
• Diversion facilities (diversion chambers and drop shafts) 
• Dewatering pumping stations 

AlexRenew upgrades including:

• Wet weather pumping station 
• Increase treatment peak capacity from 108 to 116 million gallons a day 
• Wet weather treatment utilizing existing and improved facilities at the AlexRenew plant. 

Unfortunately, without funding from the state Alexandria residents will have to pay for the full project costs which are estimated to cost between $22-$40 per sewer connection per month to finance a project that is estimated at over $340 million.

Open House at Alexandria ReNew

Alexandria Renew Enterprises, (AlexRenew) that was formerly known as the Alexandria Sanitation Authority will be holding an open house on Saturday, October 12th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM at its campus on 1500 Eisenhower Avenue. AlexRenew operates one of the most advanced wastewater reclamation facilities in the United States; it manages to treat sewage a few blocks west of Old Town almost unnoticed on a 35-acre site. They process an average of 13.5 billion gallons of wastewater every year, serving about 350,000 people in the City of Alexandria and part of Fairfax County without the neighbors being constantly reminded of their existence by the typical sewage plant stench. AlexRenew has spent millions of dollars on an order treatment removal system that makes them very good neighbors.

Alexandria Renew will show visitors how it cleans dirty water to its highest standards, turning it into clean, renewable and sustainable natural resources that can be used for a variety of safe and accepted purposes. AlexRenew removes over 90% of the nitrogen and close to 100% of the phosphorus from the sewage water coming into the plant. Those nutrients are what fuel the growth of algae blooms in the waterways and are the two of the three pollution targets of the Chesapeake Bay pollution diet mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Instead, AlexRenew nutrients in the removed solids and converts them into pathogen-free renewable material called Class A Exceptional Quality Biosolids.

The solids removed from the sewage liquid are thickened and dewater using centrifuges and then pasteurized at 158 degrees Fahrenheit for an extended period of time to kill all the pathogens. AlexRenew treats their sludge to remove not only pathogens, but also heavy metals and other contaminants to produce Class A Exceptional Quality bio-solids. This environmentally-friendly product is provided to farmers in Virginia as a nutrient-rich fertilizer. Some of the Class A Exceptional Quality Biosolids gets sent to a mulch facility where they get combined with wood fines, creating a soil amendment product that they are calling “George’s Old Town Blend” and is typically given away free at their open house to consumers, though there are plans to sell the product at some time in the future. At the open house you can see the garden where they planted with and without George’s Old Town Blend.

Annually AlexRenew reuses over 1.3 billion gallons of their own treated effluent for plant maintenance and cleaning – this saves AlexRenew almost $3 million in purchased water expenses and reduces using finished drinking water for grounds watering and cleaning. AlexRenew also uses their on-site generated methane gas that is created by the bacteria in the digesters. AlexRenew generated and captured close to 130 million cubic feet of renewable methane gas last year enough methane to heat 793 homes for a year. Their neighbors are aware that AlexRenew is undergoing an expansion, installing a new 18-million gallon wastewater storage tank that when completed with be underground and topped by a soccer field. This storage tank is part of AlexRenew’s major upgrade, which is needed to meet even more stringent environmental regulations and the Chesapeake Bay TMDL. Stop by, I plan to.