Awards

Leo Bankston Ground Water Conservation Award
Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission

2008

Georgia-Pacific Corporation has been named the recipient of the 2008 Leo Bankston Ground Water Conservation Award. Georgia-Pacific installed technology improvements at 20 water wells to provide instantaneous flow and motor amp readings from all wells and for flow rates at key pipe locations. The information allows better response time to well malfunctions or excessive flow, and it produces more accurate flow totals including automatic start/stop based on water storage levels. The result will be a reduction in total ground-water use.

The plant at Port Hudson also completed a computer model of ground-water flow in the shallow sands. The model will allow Georgia-Pacific to increase its sustainable water production in the shallow sands in place of the deeper sands in accordance with the goals of Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission.

2007

Georgia-Pacific Corporation was awarded the outstanding 2007 Leo Bankston Ground Water Conservation Award of the Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission. Georgia-Pacific completed several water conservation projects in 2006 that realize a savings of about 2.3 million gallons per day of ground water pumping. One project involved increasing the uptime for using waste water for ash sluicing by accepting more frequent pipe line cleaning. Another project involved the replacement of a faulty level valve in a cooling tower. A significant project, potentially saving about 1,500 gallons per minute and installed in December 2006, involved reusing warm water exiting an evaporative surface condenser as cooling water for a concentrator surface condenser. 

The second condenser is designed to use influent water in a temperature range that includes the effluent temperature of the first condenser. The project included installation of two new control valves and associated piping.

2005

Georgia-Pacific Corporation was awarded the outstanding 2005 Leo Bankston Ground Water Conservation Award of the Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission. Georgia-Pacific developed a process to separate paper fiber from waste water for reuse in towel manufacturing. One-half ton of fiber per day was recovered and fresh water consumption was reduced by 216,000 gallons per day.

2004

ExxonMobil was awarded the outstanding 2004 ground-water conservation award of the Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission. The "2,000-foot" sand in the industrial district has been pumped heavily for industrial use in the past. Their present emphasis is to expand the use of clarified river water and reduce the total amount of ground-water withdrawal. During the past year two cooling towers were converted from ground water to river water reducing the pumpage from the deep sands by 600,000 gallons per day. Dale Aucoin, who serves as Technical Committee Chairman for the Commission, accepted the award for ExxonMobil.

A certificate of appreciation was also awarded to Georgia-Pacific Corporation. Instead of adding new wells for a towel plant Georgia-Pacific invested in pumps and piping to reuse effluent from paper machine operations for pulp washing in the pulp mill. The water reclamation project was designed to reuse up to 4.7 million gallons of water per day. Ronnie Albritton, environmental supervisor at Georgia-Pacific, accepted the award.

2003

Honeywell International Inc., Baton Rouge Plant, was awarded the outstanding 2003 ground-water conservation award. As part of Honeywell's on-going Responsible Care effort to help conserve the natural resources of the state of Louisiana, as well as the level of groundwater in the Capital Area, Honeywell International Inc. has completed two major projects to reduce groundwater consumption. A replacement well was installed in 2001, which utilized a variable speed pump to reduce unnecessary water usage, and the installation of a Boiler condensate recovery/recycling system in 2002.

These projects in addition to other operational changes have reduced the groundwater consumption by approximately 550,000 gallons per day. This represents an approximate 35% reduction in daily consumption over the previous 36 months of operation.