A $13 million research lab to be built at the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s South Shore facility in Oak Creek will give water technology companies the necessary space to pilot their water treatment innovations. The 5,000-square-foot lab, to be completed by 2026, is being supported with a $3.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The remaining funding will be sourced through MMSD’s capital program. Anaheim, California-based Tomorrow Water and Loves Park, Illinois-based Aqua Aerobics will be the first companies to occupy the research lab. Both companies are focused on primary wastewater treatment. In a recent interview with BizTimes reporter Ashley Smart, MMSD executive director Kevin Shafer discussed the work that will take place in the new lab.
Who will work there
“Primary filtration is an emerging technology for primary wastewater treatment. This technology is not currently installed at any wastewater treatment plant in the United States at the scale required at the South Shore Water Reclamation Facility. Currently, there are two different and viable primary filtration technologies from two different suppliers: Proteus by Tomorrow Water and AquaPrime by Aqua Aerobics. Because of the innovative nature of this technology and the significant costs to implement the technology at SSWRF, district staff recommend conducting a large-scale pilot test of the primary filtration technology.”
Need for new technology
“South Shore came online in 1965, so we need to upgrade some of the systems. We’re always looking to find something that’s more efficient, lower cost, more climate resilient moving forward, and this technology, we’re hoping, will do that for us.
“We’ve had a lot of heavy rain in the Milwaukee region since Jan. 1. We’ve been able to handle the rainfall this year, but based on the models we’re seeing, those (rain totals) are just going to keep going up. We need to make sure we stay ahead of that as much as we can.”
End goal for the new lab
“(We want) to increase the exposure of these new technologies to the industries that would help them with their commercialization. We’ve got wonderful partners here in the Milwaukee area that are represented by The Water Council, so there will be a lot of partnerships with the companies that make up The Water Council … giving them a local footprint where they can test out some of their research. This lab will be just one more brick in building a water technology hub in the Milwaukee area.”
