Black & Veatch team to provide nutrient recovery in IL

A partnership between engineering firm Black & Veatch (Overland Park, KS) and Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies (Vancouver, British Columbia) has been selected by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) to design and build a new nutrient recovery system at MWRD’s Stickney water reclamation plant in Cicero, Illinois. The new system will remove phosphorus and nitrogen from wastewater effluent, thereby facilitating the improvement of water quality in local lakes and streams, and it will use the recovered materials to make fertilizer, which the Stickney plant will sell to offset some of its operations and maintenance costs. “With this new facility, the district is transforming a water challenge into a sustainable solution,” said Phillip Abrary, Ostara’s president and CEO. “Removing nutrients from where they shouldn’t be—in the waterways—and using them to create a new generation of slow-release fertilizers is the smart thing to do economically and