The City of St. Petersburg earned its first Envision Award, recognizing its dedication to improving infrastructure sustainability and resiliency through upgrades to the Northwest Water Reclamation Facility. This award highlights the City’s ongoing commitment to enhancing the reliability and environmental responsibility of its infrastructure, particularly in water reclamation. St. Pete is one of three cities in Florida to be recognized for a wastewater project.
“The Envision Award is a respected milestone that reflects St. Pete’s dedication to integrating innovative solutions, prioritizing public health, and enhancing the city’s resilience against climate risks,” said Maeven Rogers, the City’s Sustainability & Resilience Director. “This award sets a new benchmark for sustainable infrastructure in our community. St. Pete remains committed to building upon this progress and continuing to identify innovative ways to build a stronger, more sustainable, resilient future for all.”
The Envision Award, presented by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI), recognizes projects that demonstrate excellence in sustainability and resiliency and evaluates projects on their environmental, social, and economic performance. The City adopted the Envision Sustainable Infrastructure Framework to guide the project’s planning, design, construction, and operation and used the third-party Envision verification program to validate its sustainability efforts.
The Northwest Water Reclamation Facility, with an annual average capacity of 20 million gallons per day, provides essential wastewater and reclaimed water services for St. Pete’s Northwest Service Area. The improvement project focuses on replacing aging assets, improving wastewater service and reliability, and mitigating wet weather overflows. Overall, this project is designed to enhance the overall resiliency of the Northwest Water Reclamation Facility.
Key components of this project include replacing the aging influent pump station, adding a coarse screening facility, upgrading fine screens, and installing an odor control system to improve wastewater services. It also involves building two 7.5-million-gallon covered reject water storage tanks for retreatment to ensure compliance with state regulations. Improvements are anticipated to be completed in December 2025.
These improvements are being done in coordination with other projects as part of the St. Pete Agile Resilience Plan (SPAR). SPAR represents a bold, accelerated approach to strengthening the city’s infrastructure, ensuring long-term resilience in the face of climate challenges.
