CWS News Stories Articles - Clean Water Services

‘Wastewater Olympics’ Boosts Essential Services Skills

It’s been called the Wastewater Olympics, the Sewage Superbowl, and one of the best professional development programs in the water sector. The Operations Challenge exists because wrangling wastewater to protect our communities and environment requires well-trained professionals who can put their skills to work quickly, safely, and collaboratively.

Give Thanks for Your Toilet

Have you thought about what it would be like to live without toilets? According to the WHO and CDC, about 1.5 billion people don’t have access to safely managed sanitation in their home, and another 3.4 billion people don’t have access to safely managed sanitation anywhere — even outside of their home. Inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes, and soil — contaminating the water resources under our feet.

A white toilet against a blue tile wall.

Diving into a New Water Year

While a calendar year ends a couple of months into the wet season, a water year follows the flow of the season.

Who’s Been Here? Using eDNA to Understand and Defend our Watershed

There are many different ways the watershed talks to us, if you know how to listen. At Clean Water Services (CWS), we are always working to understand the needs of the Tualatin River Watershed. One way we learn from the environment is asking “who or what has been here?” Since we can’t knock on the door of a beaver dam or ring a trout’s doorbell, CWS is using a new technique to translate the language of the watershed.

Native Plants: Get to the Root of their Beauty and Benefits

At Clean Water Services, our favorite plants are native plants. Local birds, bees, and butterflies agree. Native plants are vitally important to protecting and supporting a healthy watershed. They are adapted to our climate, soils, and ecosystems.

Critical Infrastructure Meets the Natural Landscape

When you kayak along the river or take a stroll through your neighborhood park, you may not realize the critical infrastructure just below the surface, hiding underground and carrying wastewater to a treatment facility or stormwater to a nearby waterway.

Clarified Vision: Planning and Building for Changing Communities and Climate

The pipes, pump stations, stormwater systems, and treatment facilities that protect the health of all of us who live and work in Washington County are able to serve our growing communities because of decades of planning. The systems that will meet our needs 20 years from now will arrive thanks to planning being done today.