Taking Green to the Extreme

By Diane Mastrull, Inquirer Staff Writer

At Manhattan's tony southern tip, the Visionaire is an architectural stunner, a captivating 35-story presence along the Hudson River, with a curved waterfront wall of windows that offers entrancing views of the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from condos priced as high as $7.5 million.

The rooftop "sky garden" boasts landscaped planting areas, built-in grills, and cabanas. The lobby features a 12-foot-long aquarium filled with colorful tropical fish.

But on his first visit Wednesday, it was the basement that Don Shields, an engineer with a subsidiary of Voorhees-based American Water, couldn't wait to see.

There, in a corner, a compact jumble of pipes, tanks, and tall, spaghettilike membranes were processing - out of sight of the monied residents above - that which flows when a toilet is flushed.

Most significant about the system, which Shields helped design, is that it was recycling the water that carried all those unmentionables to the processing site. Once separated from impurities (human waste, but also such accidental flushables as Matchbox cars and Lego pieces) and disinfected, the water is sent back to the building's toilets and cooling towers.

Water from showers and washing machines also is scrubbed and purified for reuse by the highly automated system, which can recycle 25,000 gallons per day.

"Wastewater excites? Yes, it does," said an unapologetic Shields, vice president of construction for American Water's Applied Water Management Group. "We're doing something here that's unique."

Designing, installing, and managing wastewater-recycling systems are just part of a long list of efforts by American Water to promote more sustainable living. It advocates not only conserving of the natural resource the company depends on, but also maintaining a more minimalist approach to electric use and finding better uses for the byproducts of water purification and wastewater management than occupying landfills and sewer systems.