Increasing population, increasing environmental pressures, aging infrastructure, aging workforce and increasing resistance to taxes require wastewater utilities to be increasingly more efficient and versatile to:
− meet their environmental obligations
− sustain their infrastructure,
and
− still meet their obligations to their ratepayers
The Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA), operators of a 80 million gallon per day wastewater treatment plant in Camden, NJ, found that implementation of an Environmental Management System (EMS) was absolutely essential to meeting both its environmental and financial goals, and obligations. Specifically, the CCMUA’s Environmental Management System has enabled it to:
• sustain, and optimize, its water quality performance
• sustain, and optimize, its air quality performance
• sustain, and optimize, its infrastructure
• establish, and sustain, rate stability
• sustain, and protect, wetlands within Camden County
• sustain, and capture, institutional knowledge
• sustain, and improve, relationships with regulatory agencies, neighbors and other interested stakeholders
This paper will demonstrate why the CCMUA implemented its Environmental Management System (EMS), provide a description of how the EMS was developed and then explain in detail how the CCMUA’s aforementioned environmental and economic sustainability goals were achieved through the EMS.
