CABE Associates, Inc. wins the ACEC's 2010 Grand Conceptor Award

Dover, DE (November 13, 2009) – CABE Associates, Inc. has been selected as the winner of the 2010 Grand Conceptor Award for The Town of Millsboro 2009 Wastewater Treatment Improvements Project by the Delaware Chapter of the American Council of Engineering Companies. The Grand Conceptor is the highest honor in their annual Engineering Excellence Awards Program. The program recognizes those engineering achievements that demonstrate the highest degree of skill and ingenuity, while providing a significant benefit to the public welfare and the practice of consulting engineering.

CABE Associates provided comprehensive engineering services for this project including planning, design, and innovative financing that enabled the Town to  construct the first tubular membrane wastewater treatment BNR facility on the Delmarva Peninsula. The facility is the largest air-lift tubular membrane wastewater treatment process in the Western Hemisphere, as well. The high level of treatment provided by the membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment system produces effluent suitable for multiple beneficial reuse, aquifer recharge, and disposal methods.

The singular financing concept developed for this project reduced borrowed funds by 27%. Additional work amended the Town's annexation, impact and connection fees to better reflect the capital cost and debt risk associated with municipal wastewater infrastructure capacity improvements.

Shoehorning the project into a tiny 1.7 acre site, while keeping the existing system in operation, required considerable ingenuity during design and great dexterity, by Bearing Construction, during construction. Existing tankage was reused in the new plant but in different services. The plant was designed to expand vertically. Mechanical and process equipment were built on top of equalization and process tankage. The air-lift tubular membrane equipment is uniquely housed in a building versus being submerged in the process tanks. Modular capacity adjustments, maintenance and repair all benefit from this arrangement.

This tubular membrane technology is the keystone to Millsboro’s treated wastewater beneficial reuse program, the first of its type in Delaware. The delivery phase of the reuse program will be partially funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009 Green Project Reserve.

The first phase of the upgrade, 1.15 MGD capacity, was completed in July of 2009. The second phase, when constructed, will expand the plant to an ultimate capacity of 3.0 MGD.