Aquapoint, a New Bedford environmental company, was selected to provide the wastewater treatment system for NASA’s LEED certified Infinity Science Center in Southern Mississippi.

LEED, is the U.S. Building Council’s standard for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.”

“This is a new industry,” Aquapoint’s CEO, Craig Lindell, told us during a recent visit. “Wastewater management is no longer simply about the disposal of pollution to preserve public health. Wastewater is now a resource and its infrastructure will now be designed to achieve integrated water resource and watershed management. Wastewater will be treated to standards that enable us to recycle and reuse it to support our communities and the natural systems on which they depend and then to the extent possible, return it to the source from which it came.

Illustrating how water and energy are interrelated Lindell went on to discuss a 100 home community in El Paso TX that he expects to be built later this year. The development will receive its electricity exclusively from solar and hydrogen fuel cell technologies. The wastewater will be treated to Texas reuse standards. Twenty seven percent will be recycled for laundry and toilet flushing and seventy percent will be reused for irrigation.

The German energy company, Green Flash Energy, chose Aquapoint’s Bioclere because it operates reliably on very little electricity. Green Flash estimates the average home will spend about $40 dollars a year for is share of the electrical costs while it will save almost twice that amount in the reduction of its water bill.