Omega Institute goes for the (LEED) Platinum in reimagining its sewage problem into America’s
first Living Building project

How Green
is My Stool?

By Steve Hopkins

Pretty green, as it turns out. Skip Backus (speaking in the above photo), the self-made director of the Omega Institute, which resides in the Town of Clinton in Dutchess County but maintains a tony Rhinebeck mailing address, hosted a contingent of visiting journalists on March 26 to take a gander at the nearly completed Omega Center for Sustainable Living (OCSL), a natural wastewater treatment facility designed to double as a state-of-the-art education center. As setting seemingly impossible goals is ingrained in the Omega consciousness, the OCSL is also striving to attain a lofty designation as a LEED Platinum-certified piece of sustainable architecture, as well as to become the first building in the United States to be deemed a Living Building.

In 2005 Omega began to look at replacing its aging septic system and decided that a living machine — a natural wastewater treatment system housed in a building designed and built to the toughest criteria of sustainable architecture — was the most appropriate response for these times.
In creating the OCSL, Omega worked with a number of progressive, forward-thinking companies. John Todd, a pioneer in the field of natural wastewater treatment systems and head of John Todd Ecological Design, collaborated with civil engineers from the Chazen Companies to do preliminary engineering work to envision the living machine and how it would fit into the systems currently on campus. They laid the important groundwork for BNIM, the sustainable architecture firm that ultimately designed the facility.

The full team also included Backus and others from Omega, along with Natural Systems International (NSI), which provided comprehensive and specialized engineering services in natural wastewater treatment, stormwater treatment, water reuse, and water resources master planning, utilizing natural systems including constructed wetlands and the applied ecologies of the pond, river, prairie, and woodland; the landscape architect, Conservation Design Forum (CDF), a nationally recognized design firm that explores and creates integrated, water-based design strategies that promote economic, social, and ecological sustainability; Tipping Mar + associates, a highly skilled structural engineering firm dedicated to engineering excellence, creativity, and innovation; BGR Consulting Engineers, Inc., a full service mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, and technology design engineering firm; and Dave Sember Construction.

The result of their collaboration is a 6,200-square-foot building that contains a classroom, laboratory, and a 4,500 -square-foot greenhouse for Omega’s living sewage treatment processor, the Eco Machine. Slated to come online sometime this spring, the Eco Machine will treat more than 5 million gallons of wastewater annually. The OCSL will offer visitors a direct experience with the most recent, cutting-edge technologies in green building and sustainable living, and will show in an experiential, accessible way, how we can move forward together.

Accepting the Challenge; LEEDing the way

In taking on the Living Building Challenge, a program of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, the OCSL is helping to push the boundaries of green building and sustainable architecture to help our society move quickly to a state of balance between natural and built environments.
Taking a holistic approach to green building, the Living Building Challenge requires buildings to be informed by their eco-region’s characteristics; generate all of their own energy with renewable resources; capture and treat all of their water; operate efficiently; and be designed for maximum beauty. There are six performance areas: site, energy, materials, water, indoor quality, and beauty and inspiration — and certain criteria must be met in each category in order for a building to be designated a Living Building.

The point is to facilitate changes in the green building industry by examining the best knowledge and practices available today in sustainable architecture — including design, sourcing, building codes, economics, consumer expectations, and so on — and creating a benchmark of the highest level of sustainability currently possible in the marketplace. It is a challenge to building owners, architects, engineers, and design professionals to build in a way that moves us toward sustainable architecture and a truly sustainable future.

As mentioned earlier, the OCSL is also being constructed to meet the highest green building standards of the trade: LEED Platinum status. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system is a third-party certification program and the nationally accepted benchmark for sustainable design, construction, and operation of high performance buildings. By meeting certain criteria, a project accumulates credits. The total number of credits a project finishes with determines its LEED status: Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum.

Developed in the 1990s, LEED has helped take green building and sustainable architecture into the mainstream. It provides building owners and operators with the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their building’s performance while encouraging a shift in the global marketplace of sustainable architecture and green building.

The soul of a new machine

The Eco Machine (the name is trademarked, so don’t try to steal it, kids) that lies at the heart of the OCSL is the latest in living machine technology. Designed by John Todd, a pioneer in the field of ecological design, this living machine is natural wastewater treatment system that cleans water by mimicking the systems of the natural world. Wastewater comes into the Eco Machine and is run through various treatment zones where all major forms of life are represented, including microscopic algae, fungi, bacteria, plants, snails and fish. This natural wastewater treatment is a robust ecosystem that cleans the water without the need for hazardous chemicals.

The size and components of a living machine depends on how much water the system will process. Omega’s Eco Machine can process up to 52,000 gallons a day and includes anoxic tanks, constructed wetlands, the Eco Machine lagoons, sand filters, and large dispersal fields. Much of the Eco Machine’s natural wastewater treatment process is gravity fed, decreasing the amount of energy needed to operate the system. Omega plans to eventually use the purified and sterilized water from the OCSL for irrigation and in toilets throughout its campus.

In the first stage of the Eco Machine, all wastewater comes into two large septic tanks (10,000 gallons total) and naturally occurring microbial organisms living in the water begin to digest the sludge that settles to the bottom of the tanks. This process happens in the absence of oxygen (called either aerobic or anoxic) and produces a modest amount of methane gas, though not enough to harvest and use as an energy source.

From the anaerobic tanks, water makes its way into a constructed wetland full of plants known for their ability to treat wastewater. These plants help clarify the water as particles in the water stick to the plants’ roots. They also remove nitrates from the water, converting them into a harmless nitrogen gas that escapes into the atmosphere. There are four constructed wetlands in Omega’s system, each the size of a basketball court.

From the constructed wetlands, the water is collected in a 5,000-gallon tank where it is then pumped into the greenhouse and into the two aerated lagoons of the Eco Machine. There are four cells in each lagoon, and as the water makes its way through each cell it is scrubbed and cleaned by plants, fungi, algae, bacteria, snails, and other organisms in the tanks. In turn, these organisms use the nutrients to grow and thrive and the tanks become full of lush plants and teeming with life.

Before being reintroduced back into the environment, water is sent through a re-circulating sand filter. Tiny microorganisms living in the sand are capable of removing any nitrogen, organic matter or particulates that may still be present. At this point the water meets advanced wastewater standards and is ready for non-potable use.

Finally, the processed water is reintroduced to the environment via a subsurface network of chambers in two large dispersal fields under the parking lot. Eventually, the hope is to use the water to irrigate Omega’s gardens, flush its toilets, and maintain an outdoor water garden.