Background
Washington State has some of the most stringent industrial stormwater treatment standards in the United States with exceptionally low benchmark requirements for zinc, copper, and turbidity, also known as total suspended solids (TSS) or sediment.
Within the Port of Tacoma there are three industrial sites that were exceeding their benchmarks for a variety of pollutants in their stormwater runoff.
Challenge
The Port of Tacoma has spent $175 million dollars on wildlife habitat restoration and cleanup after decades of metals and oil pollution landed it on the Federal Superfund site in 1982.
An administrative order gave all three of the industrial sites within the port until December of 2014 to have installed stormwater treatment systems to address their effluent discharge problem.
Conventional stormwater treatment solutions such as stormwater ponds and biofilters haven’t been shown to remove the kinds of dissolved pollutants (particularly metals) that are proving to be the largest problem on this site.
Solution
The Up-Flo Filter was selected as one of three treatment filters installed onsite because of its proven ability to remove dissolved metals, particularly TSS, zinc, copper, and lead.
The Up-Flo Filter is a high-performance, low-maintenance filter options that offers higher loading rates and longer media life, allowing it to go longer periods between servicings. Its efficient design offers pretreatment, screening, and filtration in one device, and no moving parts means there’s less opportunity for disruption or breakage.
Outcome
Among other pollutants, the Up-Flo Filter was proven to reduce turbidity by 75% and remove 60% of total zinc.
