City of Burlington

Department of Utilities

EMS Team

Randall Kornegay, Stephen Shoaf, Clarence Sell, Jay Sykes, Mike Sutton, Mike Reaves, Steve Haller

City of Burlington• Population: Approximately 43,300

• Two wastewater treatment facilities

• Approximately 14.4 million gallons of wastewater treated daily

• Treatment facility staff = 30 employees

• Twenty-nine pretreatment program industries

• $328,400 spent on chemicals in 1998

• $1,022,773 spent on electricity in 1998

Our introduction to an EMS

• One of our local pretreatment program industries invited us to an ISO 14001 Pilot Program roundtable meeting so we could learn more about what they were doing.

• We began to see how this program would not only benefit the industry, but could also benefit our organization.

Benefits

• Enhanced performance of treatment facilities through optimization– Protection of the environment– Better relations with the regulatory agencies– Better efficiency of raw material usage

(chemicals, power)– Better relations with pretreatment industries– Cost control for favorable customer rates

Benefits (cont.)

• As a public agency in the public eye– Improved public image (perception)– Positive public involvement– Open dialogue of community concerns

• Odors, Noise, River discharges

– Opportunities for public education

• Improved identification and tracking of legal requirements involved in the operation

Benefits (cont.)

• Improved employee awareness of the importance and impact of their job

• Environmental review of new projects

• Conversion of an inherently dangerous work environment into a safer environment for all