The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized 30 clean water infrastructure projects for excellence and innovation within the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) program. Honored projects include large wastewater infrastructure projects to small decentralized and agriculture projects.

Recognized Project:

City of Liberty, Missouri – Design-Build Wastewater Treatment Facility

The city of Liberty previously sent their wastewater to Kansas City to get treatment from another plant. However, when this facility had to respond to a consent decree to reduce combined sewer overflows (CSOs), an increase in rates for Liberty would have been a result. Liberty decided to forgo transferring their wastewater and instead took out a $79 million CWSRF loan to build a new state of the art wastewater treatment facility of their own and perform conveyance system improvements.

The new facility was the first Missouri CWSRF project to use a design-build approach. Under a design-build contract, the owner contracts with a single design and construction team. In a traditional design-bid-build project, the owner manages separate contracts for design and construction. Some of the potential advantages of design-build include quicker project delivery; fewer changes, claims, and litigation; enhanced project coordination; and firm costs. The new facility built using this design-build approach has a 5-MGD capacity and includes treatment processes for activated sludge, bio-phosphorus, and nitrogen reduction. This facility has received a Design-Build Institute of America 2017 National Award for Merit in water/wastewater and was named Project of the Year for 2017 by the Design-Build Institute of America-Mid-America Region.

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