Wastewater
Treatment Earns Award
 TVA’s
work in bringing practical innovation to wastewater treatment was recognized
this year by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which conferred
an Environmental Merit Award on TVA employee Les Behrends.
The EPA awards
recognize creative and productive efforts to promote environmental stewardship.
Behrends, a Team Leader in TVA’s Air, Land & Water Sciences department,
won in the individual category for his patented subsurface-flow wetland
technology, which has made TVA’s decentralized wastewater-treatment
systems even more efficient and economical for small industries and
communities.
Instead of hazardous
chemicals, the systems use water and alternating levels of oxygen to
remove water-borne pollutants from industrial, domestic, and agricultural
wastewater. Behrends’s improvement allows for the faster and more
efficient breakdown of organic materials, as well as the removal of
nutrients that could adversely affect water quality. TVA has installed
the technology in a north Alabama subdivision, at a central Alabama
swine farm, and at a Tennessee-based food-processing company.
During the October
2000 honors ceremony, EPA Regional Administrator John H. Hankinson said,
“Those honored today have gone above and beyond the call of duty
to address public-health and natural-resource-protection issues of concern.”
Return
to previous page
|