October 30, 2021. The city of Longmont, Colorado, had won the Water Environment Federation’s (WEF) 2021 WEF Project Excellence Award, a national distinction granted to projects in the water sector executed with excellence and innovation.
The city Public Works and Natural Resources department and its consultants, CGRS Inc. and Carollo Engineers, won WEF’s Project Excellence Award for the execution of its Biogas Treatment and Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) Fueling Station project, a groundbreaking resource recovery and reuse effort that treats and converts biogas produced at the city Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) into RNG for vehicle fuel. This project is the first of its kind along the Colorado Front Range.
John Gage, a Senior Civil Engineer with the city, accompanied by Carollo’s Becky Luna, accepted the award at the WEF’s Technical Exhibition and Conference, better known as WEFTEC. Held on Tuesday, October 19, the awards celebration was attended by water quality professionals from across the country.
The Project Excellence Award recognized the project for its ability to address common and complex issues within the water sector and deliver original, sustainable and valued solutions that not only meet the owner agency’s expectations in terms of quality, cost, and schedule but also improve the well-being of local communities.
To achieve this, the Biogas Treatment and RNG Fueling Station project is comprised of a new biogas-upgrading system at the WWTP, a new indoor vehicle-fueling station and administration building, and a pipeline to transport the RNG between the WWTP and fueling site. The produced RNG currently fuels the city’s Waste Services fleet whose diesel trucks were recently replaced with 11 quiet, odorless vehicles that run on compressed natural gas (CNG).
Since the biogas-upgrading system and vehicle-fueling station came online in March 2020, the city has offset nearly 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel per year, not only saving up to $300,000 annually in fuel costs but also reducing greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year—the equivalent of removing 200 cars from the road. And, because RNG can also be sold as valuable renewable identification numbers (RINs) or “credits” through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard program, the city anticipates earning a revenue of close to $400,000 by the end of 2021.
Today, the biogas-upgrading system is operated almost continuously, making sustainable use of the WWTP’s biogas. The city plans to complete the transition of the remaining 10 Waste Services trucks to RNG by 2024.