This was no ordinary ribbon cutting at WSSC Water’s new Piscataway bioenergy facility in Accokeek, Maryland. In fact, they didn’t cut a ribbon at all, even though it was a grand opening celebration.
Instead, dignitaries, to include politicians and their representatives, all grabbed the giant ribbon and pulled.
That tug flushed a toilet, or at least triggered a sound effect, and demonstrated a simplified version of a stinky, smelly and complicated process that turns the brown you flush into green energy.
There were lots and lots of dad jokes about poop.
“Your No. 2 is our No. 1,” said J.C. Langley, director of production with WSSC Water.
There were other jokes too, from him and others who spoke. But all jokes aside, the $271 million facility will also be hugely beneficial to the environment.
“It doesn’t disappear when they flush the toilet. It doesn’t poof, go away and it’s magic,” Langley said. “I tell students a lot of times that someone else is going to have to deal with what you flush, and this kind of grosses them out. But it’s true, because it ends in a facility like this. It comes in as a waste stream. We convert it to a usable product. We clean the water. We separate the water and solids.”
The water gets cleaned and ends up in the Potomac River. The solids get the methane gas harvested from them, cleaned and purified, and then it becomes natural gas.
Later this year, that gas will be used to power Montgomery County’s Ride On buses.
“It is a trendsetter when you’re using biosolids to create energy,” said Serena McIlwain, the secretary of the environment in Maryland.
“Waste to eliminate waste,” she told the audience. “If you don’t know what a circular economy is, that’s what it means.”
She said about 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions in Maryland come from transportation sources.
“This is a great way for us to use our own natural resource to create gas to power our natural gas buses,” said Rich Madaleno, chief administrative officer in Montgomery County. “We’re finding our own source of power from within the region, from within everyone’s bathroom, in order to keep the Ride On bus fleet going.”
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