WEAT Municipal WWTP of the Year Category 3

MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT OF THE YEAR Category 3 (>15 MGD)

...acknowledges a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Texas that has consistently exhibited outstanding performance of daily activities beyond the normal call of duty.

South Austin Regional WWTP Austin Water

South Austin Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant located in Del Valle, Texas is owned and operated by Austin Water. It has an annual average effluent flow of 39.3 MGD.

South Austin Regional WWTP is a conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment plant with three treatment trains. Process units for each train include mechanical bar screens, grit removal, primary clarifiers, flow equalization, complete mix activated sludge aeration basins, secondary clarifiers, chlorine contact basins, filters, and dechlorination. Waste sludge is thickened and pumped to the City of Austin’s Biosolids Management Plant for treatment and beneficial reuse.

SAR WWTP’s compliance history is exemplified in the last five years by achieving both Gold and Silver NACWA Peak Performance Awards. The NACWA Peak Performance Awards have three award levels: Platinum, Gold, and Silver. The Platinum Award recognizes 100 percent compliance with permits over a consecutive five-year period. The Gold Peak Performance award recognizes 100 percent compliance with permits for the past calendar year. The Silver Peak Performance award is presented to facilities with no more than five permit violations during the past calendar year. SAR has received the NACWA Peak Performance Gold Award in 2017, the Silver Award in 2018, the Silver Award in 2019 and the Gold Award in 2020. South Austin Regional WWTP is currently implementing and maintaining a documented safety program. SAR has only had two lost time incidents since 2019.

During COVID 2020-2021, SAR faced personnel reduction due to COVID, but SAR met all compliance requirements despite the personnel challenges. Overlapping the pandemic, which was already straining city resources, winter storm Uri severely challenged SAR’s operations. Uri, which brought 164 hours of freezing temperatures and broke the record for consecutive days of grounded snow, left up to 40 percent of Austin residents without power, with some outages lasting as long as 72 hours.

In addition to the power and travel challenges, the winter storm caused significant disruptions to the States product availability of sodium hypochlorite supplies. Chemical providers were facing electrical issues which halted production and delivery. SAR operations management reached out to other chemical providers to provide disinfection chemicals for SAR. Five days of continued persistence and tenacity by SAR’s Superintendent Mark Reeh paid off. Mark was able to procure and receive deliveries of Sodium Hypochlorite without any disruption to SARs operations. Equally impressive, SAR did not have any permitted effluent limit excursions during the winter storm.