Narragansett Bay Commission Recognized by EPA for Environmental Achievements

Release Date: 04/22/2015
Contact Information: David Deegan, (617) 918-1017
BOSTON – Two winners in Rhode Island were recognized today at EPA’s 2015 Environmental Merit Awards ceremony. The environmental leaders were among 27 recipients across New England honored for helping to improve New England’s environment... (Full Story)

The Narragansett Bay Commission, Providence
The Narragansett Bay commission owns and operates Rhode Island’s two largest wastewater treatment facilities and is a leader in protecting the water quality of Narragansett Bay. Over the past year, the commission has shown its commitment to the bay by going beyond what was required of it for wastewater treatment. The commission is a leader in water quality monitoring in the state, voluntarily measuring nutrients to monitor how well its infrastructure investments work, and to find potential sources of contaminants. Monitoring showed that dissolved inorganic nitrogen levels in the bay last summer were the lowest since monitoring began. Over the past few years, the commission started a collaborative evaluation of sustainable solutions to improve water quality that brought together experts from environmental agencies and academia. In 2014, the commission also made significant progress in addressing pathogens, which led to a great improvement in shell-fishing. So far, the commission’s combined sewer overflow project has treated more than 6 billion gallons of flow that would have entered the bay untreated. The Narragansett Bay Commission has installed three wind turbines at Field’s Point, creating the first wind farm in the state and generating nearly half the energy used by the plant. The commission worked with University of Rhode Island researchers to measure greenhouse gas emissions from aeration tanks so it could correctly measure its carbon footprint. Lastly, the Commission collaborated with the state university, EPA, and several state agencies to reduce consumption of fossil fuel-based energy at each of the 19 treatment facilities in Rhode Island. This program success has led to similar analyses of state drinking water plants, public schools, and municipal buildings.