Water New Zealand Auckland Regional Meeting

Where: Beca Auditorium, Beca House, 21 Pitt Street
When: Tuesday 13^th November, 5.30-8.30pm
What: Technical Presentation on Hampton Roads Sanitation District’s SWIFT Project + Networking Function

Watercare and Beca are co-hosting a technical visit to NZ by Dr Charles Bott (short CV attached but see also below) who is Director of Water Technology and Research (Chief Technical Officer) at the Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) in Virginia, USA. Charles will be accompanied by Stephanie Klaus, one of the PhD students he has working for him on advanced nutrient removal processes at some of the 14 WWTPs that he oversees. The HRSD wastewater plants all discharge to tributaries of or directly to the Chesapeake Bay which has seriously compromised water quality issues and his plants have been and still are being upgraded to meet stringent EPA total maximum daily load targets on nutrients and solids.

One of the exciting projects that HRSD has instigated is the SWIFT (Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow) project – see below for an overview and http://swiftva.com/ for more details. As one of the project leaders, Charles will present on SWIFT which is a project that covers all three waters - wastewater, water, and stormwater – in a fully integrated ONE Water manner.

SWIFT is an innovative water treatment project in eastern Virginia designed to further protect the region’s environment, enhance the sustainability of the region’s long-term groundwater supply and help address environmental pressures such as Chesapeake Bay restoration, sea level rise and saltwater intrusion.

The project will take highly treated water that would otherwise be discharged into the Elizabeth, James or York rivers and put it through additional rounds of advanced water treatment to meet drinking water quality standards. The SWIFT Water will then be added to the Potomac Aquifer, the primary source of groundwater throughout eastern Virginia.

Also in attendance will be Claus Homann (short CV attached ), another international expert on resource recovery and energy neutrality for wastewater plants, who is visiting New Zealand from Denmark. Claus is the Chief Operation Officer and Chief of Strategic Development for Aarhus Water Ltd. in Aarhus, a leading water utility company in Denmark. They produce drinking water, treat wastewater, maintain sewer systems and are actively involved in groundwater (bore water) protection. Their mission is to offer and develop resource-efficient services throughout the entire water cycle, creating a climate-adapted, sound environment, growth and export, all of which will be of benefit to customers and stakeholders. Aarhus Vand is internationally known for their innovative technologies and services and theyare currently developing on of the world’s most resource-effective treatment plants – the Marselisborg WWTP.

Pen Portrait of Cr Charles Bott

Charles is a two time winner of the Water Environment Federation (WEF) Harrison Prescott Eddy Medal for outstanding contribution to wastewater principles/processes research. He was a previous member of the WEF Board of Trustees, and he is the current co-chair of the WEF and the Water Environment & Reuse Foundation (WE&RF) Leaders Innovation Forum for Technology (LIFT) program. Charles’ technical interests include municipal and industrial wastewater treatment, as well as renewable energy generation. He has specific expertise in the areas of chemical and biological phosphorus removal, denitrification with alternative carbon sources, nitrification kinetics, nutrient recovery, deammonification/anammox, biological treatment process modeling and design, and biogas conditioning. An important areas of focus are mainstream shortcut nitrogen removal and technologies for potable reuse.