By Davies Hood, Induron Executive Vice President
We all want a greener world, and we all want to save a little money. And the Greater Lawrence Sanitary District (GLSD) is showing us how we can do both.
This organization, serving communities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, is demonstrating how to have a greener world by efficiently retrofitting a wastewater treatment plant.
This article from the January 2012 edition of Water and Waste Digest highlights the efficiency improvements at this plant that will “promote green concepts in the environmental sense, but also green concepts in the more traditional sense, as they ultimately will reduce cost for the district.”
Essentially the GLSD will burn biogas for building heating and to run boilers used in the treating sewage daily. This will allow the facility to use the gas instead of flaring it off, therefore further reducing their carbon footprint. If this biogas-for-fuel initiative was not enough, the GLSD decided to add two ground-mounted solar power systems consisting of more than 2,000 panels that should save the system approximately $59,000 annually in energy cost.
I know the Green Mountains are in New Hampshire, and because of organizations like the GLSD, those mountains should stay “green” for generations to come!