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NEW Water celebrates nine decades of water treatment

By Heather Graves
Editor


GREEN BAY – In the midst of the Great Depression, while much was focused on the country’s financial uncertainty, a group of concerned citizens recognized the need to address the area’s uncontrolled pollution of area waterways.

“Our history is not that much different from a lot of utilities around that time,” NEW Water Executive Director Tom Sigmund said. “There was a lot of industry in Green Bay – whether it was food processing, meat packaging, paper production. Back in the 1920s, we produced a lot of stuff, and it was intended to be discharged directly to either Fox River or East River, and the pollution just became so bad that in around the 20s, they started saying ‘we need to do something.’ The water wasn’t anything anybody wanted to be around.”

NEW Water, the brand of the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District (GBMSD), was formed Dec. 4, 1931, with the first treatment plant operational in early 1935.

Sigmund said the person considered to be the “father of GBMSD” was a local attorney named Meyer Cohen.

“He realized that we were just not on a sustainable path,” he said. “He had seen that this concept about a metropolitan sewer district could be formed instead of just each community doing their own thing… But, Meyer thought a metropolitan sewerage district could be a lot more effective and efficient at providing the services. So, Meyer kind of drafted up the language and pulled together the city leaders at the time, and basically formed the district in 1931.”

Sigmund said when NEW Water started, it would just serve as a covenant to pipe the material, so it didn’t go into the East River and went to the Fox River where it had a larger flow.”

“Very quickly after that it was realized that we needed to start treating that waste water to remove the pollutants instead of just dumping them into the rivers, which were being overloaded,” he said. “Normally, the rivers can handle some amount of pollutants, and it will just naturally get treated, but we were way, way over that.”

NEW Water was originally a regional entity, Sigmund said, with three initial municipalities – City of Green Bay, Village of Allouez and the Town of Preble.

Sigmund said the first facility had a capacity of 10 million gallons per day, and included two primary clarifiers and chlorination for treatment of the wastewater.

“It has grown from there, as the Greater Green Bay metro area grew, we continued to provide services to those of that growing community,” he said.

Continued growth

NEW Water underwent several plant expansions from 1935 through the 1950s.

In 1955, Sigmund said a secondary treatment system was installed to biologically treat the water and remove wastes more extensively.

It was during this time NEW Water began separating storm and sanitary sewers.

That way, storm water wouldn’t be filling up the system, and treatment could focus on the more concentrated wastes, something Sigmund said is still a struggle.

Anticipating future federal clean water regulations, which came in the 1970s, NEW Water underwent a $72 million expansion project, becoming the first plant in the country to simultaneously treat municipal and pulp mill wastewater, which Sigmund said set a precedent in the fight against water pollution.

The 1990s brought another expansion, adding two aeration basins, two clarifiers and an improved solids handling system to improve the plant’s ammonia removal efficiency.

In 2008, NEW Water took over operations of the De Pere treatment facility, linking them through interplant pipelines.

Built in 1976, the De Pere facility was upgraded over the years to best meet the needs of the community. 

It uses an ultraviolet light disinfection system to treat, on average, eight million gallons per day.

In 2018, the Green Bay facility underwent a $169 million Resource Recovery and Electrical Energy, dubbed R2E2, expansion, which replaced 40-year-old equipment at the Green Bay plant near the mouth of the Fox River.

Sigmund said what was once seen as just waste, is now being viewed as potential resources.

“In the past five or six years, we’ve moved to being a resource recovery facility, where we try to remove things of value that still remain in the water when our customers are done with it, such as phosphorus, and we produce digester gas, we we use generate electricity,” he said. “We generate about 40% of the electricity we use in our Green Bay facility. So we generate that onsite from the digester gas that comes from the wastewater.”

The heat generated by the new incinerator is also used for building heat or electricity production. 

Sigmund said what was once seen as just waste is now being viewed as potential resources.

Watershed program

Earlier this year, NEW Water launched its watershed program in Ashwaubenon Creek and Dutchman Creek.

Sigmund said it covers roughly 40,000 acres, and is a long-term adaptive management strategy to address area water quality concerns while providing a cost-effective, alternative compliance option for NEW Water’s wastewater discharge permit with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

He said the goal is to reduce 3.9 million pounds of sediment and 19,000 pounds of phosphorus from reaching the Bay of Green Bay each year.

The program, Sigmund said, is a collaboration of several stakeholders of governmental and non-governmental entities.

“To see long-term improvement in water quality we need to work together to prevent these pollutants from entering our waterways, starting in the watersheds,” he said.

Service area

NEW Water serves more than 230,000 residents, in a 285-square-mile area in 15 municipalities including, Green Bay, De Pere, Allouez, Ashwaubenon, Bellevue, Hobart, Howard, Luxemburg, Pulaski, Suamico, Ledgeview, Lawrence, Pittsfield, Scott and Dyckesville.

“It’s now a true regional entity serving 15 municipalities in the Greater Green Bay area,” Sigmund said.

On average per day, he said 38 million gallons of wastewater is collected, treated and returned clean back to the natural environment. 

Sigmund, who has served as executive director since 2007, said NEW Water views the material sent to its facilities as valuable resources to be recovered and reused and a commitment to protecting its most valuable resource, water.

He said NEW Water takes care of this, so residents of Greater Green Bay don’t have to worry.

“Most people don’t think about us, and that’s probably OK,” Sigmund said. “Because if they worry about us, then we aren’t doing our job. We provide the ability for this community to grow, and I don’t think a lot of people think about that. It is really just as important as roads, and electricity – we provide that ability, along with the local utilities for each of the communities, for our customers to be able to live their best lives and not have to worry about their waste product contaminating the water or the air. We take care of that for them.”

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