The Washington State Department of Ecology awarded Seattle City Light two outstanding performance awards for the utility’s wastewater treatment plants at the Skagit Hydroelectric Project.
The Washington State Department of Ecology awarded Seattle City Light two outstanding performance awards for the utility’s wastewater treatment plants at the Skagit Hydroelectric Project.
City Light received the “Wastewater Treatment Plant Outstanding Performance” awards for full compliance with effluent limits, monitoring and reporting requirements, spill prevention planning, pretreatment and overall operational demands of the utility’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits.
“It takes diligent operators and a strong management team, working effectively together, to achieve this high level of compliance,” Ecology Water Quality Program Manager Kelly Susewind wrote in a letter announcing the awards. “It’s not easy to operate a wastewater treatment plant 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without violations. Ecology appreciates the extraordinary level of effort your plant operators demonstrated throughout 2011.”
The Diablo and Newhalem plants at the Skagit Hydroelectric Project are two of the 108 plants that achieved this status in 2011 out of about 300 eligible plants statewide.
This is the fifth consecutive year the Diablo plant has earned the award and the 12th time both plants have been recognized since the awards were started in 1995.
“The plants’ high performance status is attributable to our plant operators and their dedication to protecting the waters of theSkagitRiver,” City Light Environmental Affairs Director Lynn Best said.
Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States. It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to nearly 1 million Seattlearea residents. City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.