Project Description
Sanitary Service Company, Bellingham, WA
Sanitary Service Company, Inc. (SSC), an award-winning recycling and garbage collection company, installed a two-stage StormwateRx treatment system at the company’s 4-acre facility in Bellingham, Washington.
The StormwateRx Clara basic separator and Aquip enhanced filtration system were installed to comply with both the Municipal Separate Stormwater Sewer (MS4) permit and the Washington State Department of Ecology Industrial General Permit. The Sanitary Service Company stormwater treatment project was undertaken in concert with a repaving project at the site.
TARGETED POLLUTANTS: oil & grease, suspended solids, suspended solids and other metals.
APPLIED PRODUCTS
BACKGROUND
Sanitary Service Company, Inc. (SSC), an award-winning recycling and garbage collection company, has installed a two-stage StormwateRx treatment system at the company’s 4-acre facility in Bellingham, Washington. SSC, which serves more than 45,000 residential and commercial customers, installed a Clara® stormwater separation system and an Aquip® enhanced stormwater filtration system to protect local waterways from any potential oil & grease, suspended solids or heavy metals that may flow from the site in stormwater runoff. The system has been online since October 2011 and has consistently removed target constituents to below the benchmarks.
SSC, which has been locally owned and operated since 1929, has made environmental protection a critical component of their business as a 5-Star EnviroStar, Whatcom Watershed Pledge participant, Whatcom County Waste-Wise Business, 100% Green Power business and Toward Zero Waste Pioneer. As part of their pledge to protect their local watershed and to ensure that their site was compliant with Washington State industrial permit requirements for stormwater runoff, SSC sought an above-ground stormwater treatment system that could be easily retrofitted into their existing site where garbage and recycling trucks are parked.
SSC selected StormwateRx products because they have received the Washington Department of Ecology’s conditional use level designation (CULD) approval for enhanced stormwater treatment and offered the right combination of above ground configuration and high pollutant removal for suspended solids, oil & grease and heavy metals.
As a part of their stormwater best management practices (BMPs), SSC began by paving their previously unpaved site. As a pretreatment to remove suspended solids, oil and grease, they installed a Clara 40CP stormwater separator with a design flow of 540 gallons per minute (gpm). The system then uses a 160 gpm pump to divert first flush flow to an Aquip 160SBE enhanced stormwater filtration system with enhanced media to remove fine solids and dissolved metals. Because Bellingham often experiences freezing temperatures in the winter, a freeze protection package was installed on the Aquip to ensure that the system will continue to operate under freezing conditions.
Since installation the system has performed well and serves as an example for other recyclers and waste haulers.
“As a locally-owned company in a part of the world that is known for its beautiful, clean environment, we are acutely aware that we all share in the responsibility to protect and preserve its health and beauty,” said Paul Razore, president of SSC. “At SSC, we take this responsibility seriously and our installation of an environmentally-protective StormwateRx stormwater treatment system is one of the ways we are helping to ensure that our local waterways are clean and healthy for recreation and wildlife for generations to come.”
