Building Success: Columbia’s Journey from Consent Decree to Water Heroes

The City Of Columbia (the City) operates the largest wastewater treatment plant in the state of South Carolina at a current permitted rate of 60 mgd. In the decades prior to 2014, the City’s Metropolitan Wastewater Treatment Plant (Metro) operated in the all-too-familiar philosophy: out-of-sight, out-of-mind. The result was that Metro had become inefficient and unreliable –as evidenced by a regulatory raid by federal and local authorities in 2008 and its annual average of 35 NPDES treatment related permit excursions that followed from 2009 through 2013.Faced with the possibility of losing control of their wastewater system to the EPA, the City’s response was a commitment to efficiently meet or exceed all applicable regulations and also become an industry leader worthy of representing the State’s capital.