AquaPoint, using tomorrow’s technology today.
AquaPoint provides cost-effective wastewater solutions
Business Bulletin; Vol 6, Issue 7, July 2006.

From NEBulletin.com - Jul 3, 2006, 04:31

SOUTHCOAST BUSINESS ON THE MOVE
Aquapoint provides cost-effective wastewater solutions

NEW BEDFORD – Tucked amid much bigger buildings and businesses that dot the New Bedford Business Park, Aquapoint could very well be a giant in the future of wastewater treatment for residential, commercial, institutional and municipal markets.

With the amount of development that much of New England has been going through the last few years, especially in places not located near city or town sewer pipe or treatment facilities, there has never been a greater need for a decentralized wastewater treatment than now. That’s where Aquapoint can help with the technologies it has developed that enable adaptive solutions to site specific wastewater issues.

"Decentralized wastewater treatment systems, much like the introduction of servers in lieu of big mainframe computers in the early 1990’s, offer the possibility of substantially reducing the costs of providing wastewater treatment," said company President Steve Sedgwick. "Decentralized systems can be sized for specific situations, like a remote residential development, eliminating huge costs for laying the entire connective piping necessary to collect wastewater to a big municipal plant."

Currently doing business in 26 states including Texas, Arkansas, and New Mexico in addition to New England, Aquapoint has set up wastewater treatment systems for businesses as large as Stop & Shop and Lowe’s to as small as single family homes. Examples can be seen locally at the Lowe’s Plaza in Pembroke, which helped serve three commercial shopping plazas and an office complex; Aquidneck Place in Portsmouth, R.I., an assisted living community that will eventually include treatment for a commercial plaza nearby; and a municipal wastewater treatment system to service a portion of the town of Otis, Mass.

"Due to our systems, the wastewater that is eventually pumped out is less damaging to the leach field and the overall environment," said Mr. Sedgwick. "With increasing environmental concerns around failing septic systems, especially in areas where there is no municipal treatment center, there was a need for more site specific wastewater treatment."
While Aquapoint has a number of solutions to any wastewater problems, the two main options include Bioclere, which is a self contained wastewater treatment system with a capacity to treat flows from 200 to 100,000 gallons per day, and Lotus-Active Cell Technology, which treats larger needs of flows from 1,000 gallon per day to full municipal systems that is currently under the permitting process.

The Bioclere system is a fully automated pump system, with self adjusting process control, linked to an existing septic tank, installed between the tank and the disposal system to upgrade treatment for existing facilities.
"This basically guarantees that you will never have to replace the treatment field again. Where other systems may see a treatment field fail after 5-7 years and then they have to spend half a million to replace it," Mr. Sedgwick said. "With our system, the treatment is cleaner and you will never have to replace the field."

The Lotus ActiveCell system, an Aquapoint and Hydroxyl Technology, features a fluidized reactor where microorganisms attach themselves to small, disk-like media, forming a biofilm. When the air is transferred into the water, mixing the media with the bacteria and the water, the biofilm absorbs, oxidizes and reduces organic and inorganic material for the treatment.

While Aquapoint has been selling Bioclere since the companies founding in 1993, they are just now bringing the Lotus ActiveCell to the market.

"ActiveCell is our main hope for the future, and the initial response from our market has been very positive. We have solutions and bigger technology that could eventually deal with any flow or complexity that comes along," Mr. Sedgewick said. "Right now our focus is to do an effective market introduction of the ActiveCell technology and expand its utilization into a larger geographic range."

Mr. Sedgwick said both systems are fairly easy to install and require minimal operational maintenance, and with a staff that includes environmental engineers, certified soil evaluators, freshwater ecologists and licensed wastewater plant operators, Aquapoint can provide assistance from the beginning design phase up until the final installation and continued maintenance of the wastewater treatment systems.

From NEBulletin.com - Jul 3, 2006, 04:31