Using A Management Systems Approach to Achieve Sustainability For Wastewater Utilities

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 obligationssustain their infrastructure, andstill meet their obligations to their ratepayersThe 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 performancesustain, and optimize, its air quality performancesustain, and optimize, its infrastructureestablish, and sustain, rate stabilitysustain, and protect, wetlands within Camden Countysustain, and capture, institutional knowledgesustain, and improve, relationships with regulatory agencies, neighbors and other interested stakeholdersThis 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.