Welcome to the overlook of the Wastewater Treatment Plant of Spokane, Washington.
The facility you see before you is the oldest and largest of its kind in the community. The Spokane collection system is comprised of "65 miles of sanitary sewer lines, 367 miles of stormwater lines, 18,823 catch basins and drywells, and numerous swales and stormwater detention facilities". The collected wastewater passes through a series of processing systems, which helps to remove solids and metals, and sanitize the water, before returning it to the river. On average, the facility recycles 34 million gallons of water each day, and returns the clean water to the Spokane River.
In 2014 the city sold $200 million in Green Bonds to raise money for new projects that would benefit the community environmentally. The Wastewater Facility received funds from these bonds to develop new cachement systems around the community, as well as to build an additional filtration system to the facility you see below. The construction is well under way, and will help to "further reduce pollutants, like heavy metals, PCBs, and phosphorus, and improve the quality of the water released to the River."
If you would like a closer look at the Wastewater Facility, they can be accessed via W Downriver Drive.
Further Information can be found here.
The 2017 Spokane Geocache Tour brings you Sustainability of Spokane. This Geocache Tour will send geocachers on a trip through the Spokane region, finding caches in areas where Spokane residents utilize natural resources and give back to the environment. You will visit locations featuring water conservation, farming, waste treatment, forestry, and of course dam, solar and wind energy.
- All caches begin with the series name SOS: followed by a location specific name so they are easy to search. We also made a SOS Bookmark of the caches.
- Be sure to visit SpokaneGeoTour.com for more infomation on current tours and a map view of all caches in this series.
The Sustainability of Spokane Geocache Tour is sponsored by Cache Advance, and by donation from local cachers. We hope you enjoy the tour!
