Taking Green to the Extreme

At Manhattan's tony southern tip, the Visionaire is an architectural stunner, a captivating 35-story presence along the Hudson River, with a curved waterfront wall of windows that offers entrancing views of the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from condos priced as high as $7.5 million.

The rooftop "sky garden" boasts landscaped planting areas, built-in grills, and cabanas. The lobby features a 12-foot-long aquarium filled with colorful tropical fish.

But on his first visit Wednesday, it was the basement that Don Shields, an engineer with a subsidiary of Voorhees-based American Water, couldn't wait to see.

There, in a corner, a compact jumble of pipes, tanks, and tall, spaghettilike membranes were processing - out of sight of the monied residents above - that which flows when a toilet is flushed.

Most significant about the system, which Shields helped design, is that it was recycling the water that carried all those unmentionables to the processing site. Once separated from impurities (human waste, but also such accidental flushables as Matchbox cars and Lego pieces) and disinfected, the water is sent back to the building's toilets and cooling towers.

Water from showers and washing machines also is scrubbed and purified for reuse by the highly automated system, which can recycle 25,000 gallons per day.

"Wastewater excites? Yes, it does," said an unapologetic Shields, vice president of construction for American Water's Applied Water Management Group. "We're doing something here that's unique."

Designing, installing, and managing wastewater-recycling systems are just part of a long list of efforts by American Water to promote more sustainable living. It advocates not only conserving of the natural resource the company depends on, but also maintaining a more minimalist approach to electric use and finding better uses for the byproducts of water purification and wastewater management than occupying landfills and sewer systems.

With revenue of $2.3 billion in 2008 (2009 figures are not yet available) and 15 million customers in 32 states and Ontario, American Water bills itself as the largest U.S. investor-owned water and wastewater utility.

With its array of wholly owned regulated and nonregulated subsidiaries, including Pennsylvania American Water (2 million customers) and New Jersey American Water (2.5 million), the company has launched initiatives aimed at not only using its reach to further the green movement, but also running a better-than-competent business.

"Being an efficient company is at the core of it," said Mark LeChevallier, director of innovation and environmental stewardship.

Last month, the firm, which employs more than 7,000, announced a goal of lowering by 16 percent by 2017 its greenhouse-gas emissions per volume of water produced. Fundamental will be $50 million worth of renovations to and/or replacement of pumps, its biggest energy users, to improve efficiency.

Already, New Jersey American Water operates what is believed to be the largest ground-mounted solar-electric system in the state to power its Canal Road treatment plant in Somerset, N.J. Solar panels reduce energy use 585,000 kilowatt-hours a year and supplement 15 percent of the peak-usage power needed to run the plant.

In Yardley, wind powers a water-treatment facility, saving 1.6 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year - the equivalent, the company says, of planting more than 119,000 trees or not driving 1.5 million miles.

Recycling sediment and suspended matter recovered during water purification enables Pennsylvania American Water to cut down on landfill expenses and to limit the discharge of such materials into wastewater-treatment facilities, the company says. Those materials are now offered for landscaping and gardening for the cost of delivery; the program broke even last year, LeChevallier said.

But of all its green efforts, none is expected to get American Water to its greenhouse-gas goal faster than the pump project, LeChevallier said.

An emissions inventory revealed that 93 percent of the company's greenhouse-gas production comes from electricity use. Pumping water - more than one billion gallons a day, with water weighing eight pounds per gallon - accounts for more than 90 percent of that. The annual electric bill: nearly $100 million.

An additional 4 percent of the utility's carbon footprint comes from fuels, mostly natural gas and diesel, used predominantly for standby generators and to heat buildings.

Hence, the decision to use $50 million from American Water's capital-improvements budget over seven years to renovate and, where necessary, replace pumps.

LeChevallier does not know how many pumps that could be, but he said 48 locations accounted for "the lion's share of our electricity use." In all, he said, the company pays nearly 5,000 electric bills.

Denise Venuti Free, a spokeswoman for American Water, said pumps at water-treatment facilities in Delran and Norristown were scheduled to be replaced.

The company "cannot specifically quantify an impact on rates" resulting from the improvements, she said, but LeChevallier expects no blowback from customers on the expense.

"They want to know that their water utility is knowledgeable about being efficient," he said. "The cost of water is going up because of regulations and the need to make investments [because of] climate change and scarcity. It's important the customers know what value they get."

That's a priority among investors, as well, he said. "They're investing in what is a green industry and looking for us to be green."

Russell Albanese says his customers are increasingly expecting the same from him and his buildings. His Albanese Organization developed the $200 million Visionaire, one of three multifamily high-rises the company has built in Battery Park City in the last 10 years with a heavy emphasis on sustainability.

The Visionaire, which opened in September 2008, is LEED platinum-certified, the highest of the U.S. Green Building Council's sustainability standards.

American Water reached out to the developer, knowing that being in Battery Park, where environmentally responsible buildings are required, he might be receptive to the idea of a wastewater-recycling system.

Influencing Albanese's decision to include the nearly $2 million system was an incentive from New York City: a 25 percent reduction in water rates. "The city's rates have been increasing on average 11 percent a year, so the savings over time should become more significant," he said.

For wastewater recycling to catch on, other states have to play a similar role as "regulatory driver," said American Water's Shields.

Otherwise, his colleague Jim Schilling said, when it comes to toilets, "most folks don't know what happens when they hit that lever, nor do they care."