Page 6 - July-Aug 2021 Vol 39 No 2

CHATTANOOGA By Chris Palmer
Moccasin Bend Green Energy Focus

In 1969, Walter Cronkite famously MBWWTP currently uses approximately cell installation at the MBWWTP site.
dubbed the City of Chattanooga as the 60% of Chattanooga’s total facilities power The goal of the project was to utilize
“Dirtiest City in America.” The city was usage. In 2019, Chattanooga selected approximately ten acres of unplanned
extremely polluted to the point where Jacobs to study, design, and oversee the space at the MBWWTP for solar panel
most days you couldn’t see the top of construction of a 3.2 MW photovoltaic installation, which would reduce the
Lookout Mountain.
Since that time, Chattanooga has
pulled a 180 and reversed the negative
impacts on the air, land, and water
quality to a point that it is thriving with
growth. Recent major contributions to
reversing these negative impacts have
been the city’s performance through the
Clear Chattanooga Program to provide
clean waterways and the Better Buildings
Challenge to plan, measure and manage
the progress toward the city’s prescribed
energy, greenhouse gas, and waste
reduction goals.
Chattanooga’s Waste Resources Division
The City of Chattanooga Waste
Resources Division (WRD) has played one
of the most significant roles in these efforts,
not only through the Clear Chattanooga
Program, which has reduced sanitary sewer
overflows, but also by focusing efforts on
energy and greenhouse gas reductions.
The Waste Resources Division owns,
operates, and maintains 70 pump
stations, eight combined sewer overflow
treatment facilities (CSOTFs), more
than 1,263 miles of gravity sewer, 53
miles of forcemains, and the Moccasin
Bend Wastewater Treatment Plant
(MBWWTP) which has an average
daily flow of approximately 65 million
gallons per day and a total permitted
capacity of 230 million gallons per day.
The operations and maintenance of these
facilities make the WRD by far the largest
energy user of the city. This significant
power usage has allowed the WRD to
maintain a focus on energy reduction
and green energy creation in a way that
provides a major benefit to the city.
The MBWWTP receives and treats
wastewater from the greater Chattanooga
area, including the City of Chattanooga
and eight regional city customers. The
total population served is approximately
400,000 people. Utilizing the current
treatment processes, the MBWWTP
uses on average 51 million kWh at a
total power cost of $3.8M annually. The
Site archeological survey results Fixed Axis diagram
6 TPW July/August 2021