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King County protects water quality and public health in the central Puget Sound region by providing high quality and effective treatment to wastewater collected from our local sewer agencies. The County's Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD) serves about 1.5 million people within a 420-square-mile service area, which includes most urban areas of King County and parts of south Snohomish County and northeast Pierce County. WTD’s treatment plants include two large, regional treatment plants; two small treatment plants, and one community septic system. A third large treatment plant, the Brightwater Treatment Plant, is under construction and scheduled to begin operating in 2011. King County's wastewater utility is entirely funded by the ratepayers who invest in the County's programs and services through their monthly sewer rate and capacity charge bills. King County takes seriously its obligation to provide the highest levels of service and accountability to its ratepayers. Website: http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/wtd.aspx |
Over the past 20 years, the Royal Thai government supported the construction of more than 85 wastewater management systems, ranging from combined drainage networks to activated sludge processes. Though initially managed by the central government, these systems now fall the under the responsibility of local government authorities (LGAs) to operate and maintain. However, because most LGAs lack the proper technical and financial resources to fulfill this mandate, more than 75% of the systems constructed are in poor condition. The Wastewater Management Authority of Thailand (WMA) assists LGAs in rehabilitating defunct wastewater treatment facilities and in managing their transition to full operational status. Applied in a four-year descending support scheme, WMA’s assistance for LGAs includes: system rehabilitation; technical assistance for improving operations and maintenance (O&M), billing and collection, and public outreach; user-pay/tariff setting; and promotion of appropriate decentralized treatment systems. To ensure sustainability, WMA also works with LGAs to raise awareness of sanitation and promote willingness-to-pay for wastewater services. Website: http://www.wma.or.th |
