HOW WAS CAMDEN CITY CHOSEN AS THE SITE OF THE MAIN PLANT?
Locating the main treatment plant in Camden made sense because – • Federal and state water quality regulations require advanced (also called “tertiary”) treatment of wastewater which will be discharged into small streams like the interior streams of the county – Big Timber Creek, Cooper River, Great Egg Harbor River, Mullica River, and Pennsauken Creek. Wastewater which will be discharged into large streams – like the Delaware River – needs only “secondary” treatment. Tertiary treatment is much more expensive to build and operate than secondary treatment. • As a result, it was cheaper and better for the environment to locate the main plant to discharge into the Delaware River rather than into one of the small interior streams of Camden County. (Average flow in the Delaware River is 4 billion gallons (15 billion liters) per day. The Cooper River, perhaps the biggest interior stream, has a flow of 35 million gallons (132 million liters) per day. Our average daily discharge of 50 – 60 mil
