Services
Clean Water Services provides stormwater and wastewater services in partnership with 12 member cities that include; Beaverton, Tigard, Tualatin, Hillsboro, King City, Forest Grove, Sherwood, Cornelius, Banks, Gaston, Durham, and North Plains.
Clean Water Services is a special service district that serves as a separately managed and financed public utility. The Washington County Commissioners serve as the board of directors for Clean Water Services.
As a wastewater utility, Clean Water Services cleans more than 60 million US gallons (230,000 m3) of wastewater a day. The watewater treatment process uses physical, biological, and chemical treatment to clean wastewater to some of the highest standards in the nation. The cleaned wastewater is then released into the Tualatin River. The wastewater is collected by a vast network of more than 800 miles (1,300 km) of sewer lines and 39 pump stations and routed to one of four treatment plants—Durham, Rock Creek, Hillsboro and Forest Grove.
Ten percent of the wastewater treated by Clean Water Services is used for irrigation and in area wetlands during the summer months. Biosolids recovered through the treatment process are sold to farmers in the region as fertilizer. Additionally, the Durham Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility is the first in the nation to recover fertilizer from a natural byproduct of wastewater treatment. In 2007 the Durham facility began working with Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies to construct a $2.5 million multi-reactor plant that allows the Durham facility to run part of its waste stream through special reactors that transform potentially damaging nutrients into environmentally friendly fertilizer, which Ostara sells commercially.
As a surface water management utility, The District’s Stormwater Management (SWM) program improves water quality, protects fish habitat and manages drainage by operating and maintaining the stormwater conveyance system, establishing design and construction standards, regulating activities that can impact the watershed and enhancing streams and floodplains. Clean Water Services is the regional SWM utility for urban Washington County. In cooperation with Washington County and the 12 member cities Clean Water Services maintains and enhances the public drainage system to meet public needs and to comply with strict water quality regulations set for the Tualatin River drainage area by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
Clean Water Services offers a classroom educational program called River Rangers geared toward 4th-grade students. Environmental educators interactively teach students about the water cycle, watersheds, surface water pollution, water conservation and wastewater treament. The 45-minute presentation is used to educate students about how people impact water quality through use of sewer and storm systems.
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—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
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