Sept. 12, 2008 Two, mile-long Brightwater outfall pipelines make successful journey to Puget Sound floor  The Brightwater Treatment Plant’s second, mile-long outfall pipeline settled alongside its twin on the Puget Sound seafloor off Point Wells Sept. 11, completing a key part of King County’s largest clean water investment in decades.
The second pipeline followed the same 17-nautical-mile journey that the first pipeline had taken just days earlier: Without a hitch, tugboats slowly guided the pipelines from their lower Snohomish River construction site to the Brightwater outfall site off Point Wells on Puget Sound.
At Point Wells, workers attached the floating pipe to a recently constructed on-shore connector then slowly lowered the pipe to the seafloor, some 600 feet below the surface of Puget Sound, where it now lays alongside its twin, which was placed there early in the morning of Sept. 10. The two pipes will be used to discharge highly treated wastewater from the state-of-the-art treatment plant when it comes online in 2011. King County selected the Brightwater outfall location after years of environmental review that included detailed study of Puget Sound oceanography and marine biology as well as an extensive permitting process involving state and federal agencies. The advanced membrane bioreactor technology at Brightwater will get wastewater seven to 10 times cleaner than conventional treatment processes, treating nearly all of the plant’s wastewater to the state’s highest reclaimed water standards. Reclaimed water from Brightwater may be used for irrigation and industry, reducing the amount of effluent discharged to the outfall and supporting the state’s Puget Sound cleanup strategy. More information about Brightwater is available at http://dnr.kingcounty.gov/wtd/brightwater/. People enjoy clean water and a healthy environment because of King County's wastewater treatment program. The county’s Wastewater Treatment Division protects public health and water quality by serving 17 cities, 17 local sewer districts and more than 1.4 million residents in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. Formerly called Metro, the regional clean-water agency now operated by King County has been preventing water pollution for more than 40 years. -###- Note to editors and reporters: Visit the WTD Newsroom, a portal to information for the news media about the Wastewater Treatment Division, King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks: http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wtd/newsroom/. Related Information Pipeline videos  Brightwater Treatment Plant Wastewater Treatment Division
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