ACWA Honors East Bay Municipal Utility District with 2011 Clair A. Hill Award

ACWA presented the prestigious Clair A. Hill Award to East Bay Municipal Utility District on May 12 for its innovative Richmond Advanced Recycled Expansion (RARE) water project.

The award was presented during the annual ACWA Spring Conference & Exhibition in Sacramento this week. East Bay Municipal Utility District was selected from among six finalists to receive the award.

“East Bay Municipal Utility District is an outstanding example of a local agency implementing creative solutions to manage California’s water resources,” ACWA President Paul Kelley said. “East Bay MUD’s program demonstrates innovation and achieves real water savings by recycling effluent from a nearby wastewater district. It managed to do all this without any cost to its ratepayers.”

Helping to meets its goal of delivering 20 million gallons per day of recycled water by the year 2040, the district completed a water treatment plant that treats secondary effluent from a local wastewater district for use by the Richmond Chevron oil refinery.

Using microfiltration and reverse osmosis, the project delivers 3.5 million gallons per day of highly purified water to the refinery, reducing demand for potable water by the same amount. Financed entirely by Chevron, the project had no effect on the water district’s rates. By redirecting flows from the wastewater district, the project will reduce wastewater and pollutant discharges into the San Francisco Bay for part of each year.

Other finalists for this year’s award were Contra Costa Water District, Kern County Water Agency, Riverside Public Utilities, and Vista Irrigation District.

Read more on the award and view a video presentation highlighting the finalists.