Our wastewater clients face the challenge of doing more with less. Increasing regulatory and service demands strain aging infrastructure, outdated technologies, and tightening budgets.
We help our clients find optimal solutions for treating, reusing, or disposing of wastewater. Our expertise spans from simple, reliable primary treatment to advanced, complex systems.
Our services cover:
- Treatment facilities
- Indirect and direct potable reuse
- Biosolids management and energy recovery
- Nutrient and resource recovery
- Energy optimization
- Facility master planning
- Collection and distribution systems
- Wet weather systems
- Odor and air management
- Innovative research and development
Treatment Facilities
Our wastewater treatment experts thrive on a challenge and consistently strive to exceed client expectations. We combine science and innovation on every project to achieve sustainable, resilient water solutions. Whether clients need a new facility, capacity expansion or advanced nutrient removal, we provide local expertise and global resources for projects of any size. This includes secondary or tertiary treatments that support agricultural and urban irrigation, as well as potable reuse.
Utilizing modern tools, we create detailed material balances for internal streams, offering cost-effective solutions. For example, our advanced nutrient removal pilot in New York City saved over $18 billion in capital and operational costs. Other projects in our portfolio include the Sha Tin Sewage Treatment Works, where we’re relocating Hong Kong’s second largest wastewater treatment plant to caverns within a mountain, and the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant in Washington, D.C., the largest advanced wastewater plant in the United States, for which we’ve provided technical services for more than 75 years.
Indirect and Direct Potable Reuse
With increased population growth, strict discharge limits and depleting traditional supplies, water reclamation and reuse are becoming important strategies to meet water needs. Our clients rely on our expertise to create unique reuse solutions like the Pure Water Southern California program. In Singapore, we are working on the complex Deep Tunnel Sewerage System Phase 2’s used water superhighway that collects, treats and reuses all water sources designed to meet future drinking and irrigation water needs.
We offer a comprehensive range of services to optimize water reuse. Our evaluations assess the potential for reclaimed water and align it with necessary treatment and storage requirements. We also develop user agreements, ordinances, and cost-effective rate structures to deliver efficient solutions. By supporting regulatory agencies and clients in advancing indirect and direct potable reuse, we ensure safe, sustainable practices. Our goal is to maximize performance while minimizing costs and environmental impact, always prioritizing public health and environmental protection.
Biosolids Management and Energy Recovery
Demand for expanded wastewater capacity and innovative treatment solutions is growing. Our water experts partner with clients to develop systems that meet modern environmental standards while turning treated wastewater and solids into reusable resources, enhancing life quality.
As leaders in the industry, we view residuals as valuable resources for both nutrients and energy. We help clients harness this potential through technologies like advanced anaerobic digestion, thermal hydrolysis, and gasification, ensuring sustainable and efficient recovery processes. For example, we helped Metro Vancouver turn surplus biogas into financially viable renewable natural gas for supply to the regional natural gas utility.
Facility Master Planning
Our master planning capabilities are distinguished by our extensive experience in evaluating plant capacity and collection systems. Clients trust our hydraulic modeling expertise to design efficient systems and explore treatment process alternatives. We develop comprehensive master plans that guide clients in infrastructure improvements and capital spending decisions.
Wet Weather Systems
We are at the forefront of the effort to help communities achieve wet weather regulatory compliance and meet water quality goals. Our capabilities extend from research activities and development of sewer system models, through master planning and into design and construction. Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are among the large U.S. cities that, in recent years, have turned to us for planning, design or implementation of wet weather management programs. In New York for example, we’re designing cloudburst flooding mitigation strategies.
Innovative Research and Development
Technical innovation continues to be an AECOM hallmark, based on superior applied research and development into such processes as advanced biological treatment for nutrient management (including sidestream and mainstream deammonification processes to help reduce high energy and chemical costs), membrane processes, biologically activated filters and advanced oxidation systems.
Working with New York City Department of Environmental Protection, we developed the Citywide Nutrient Management Strategy for New York City’s fourteen wastewater resource recovery facilities. The program embraced innovation and novel technologies such as the first sidestream centrate treatment facility in North America, to reduce cost and space requirements and to achieve sustainable environmental protection in a reduced schedule.
Awards & rankings
- ENR #1 Water Design Firm
- ENR #2 in Wastewater Treatment
- ENR #3 in Water Treatment and Desalination