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The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (“ADEQ”) issued an April 24th news release announcing the winners of the Arkansas Environmental Stewardship (“ENVY”) Award, the Arkansas Environmental Technology (“TECHe”) Award, the Energy Excellence (“E2”) Award, and the ADEQuest Science Award.
Finalists for the awards had been announced by the agency in an April 17th news release. (See previous blog post here.)
Delta Plastics was chosen as the winner of the ENVY Award.
ADEQ states that Delta Plastics has grown over the past 20 years from a one-facility operation in Stuttgart to become the largest manufacturer of polytube in the world – a multinational organization with eight locations across the U.S. and South America. The company, to date, has diverted more than one-billion pounds of waste plastic from landfills and is the largest recycler of heavily soiled plastic in Arkansas and one of the largest in the world. In 2014 Delta Plastics established the Delta Plastics H2O Initiative to reduce irrigation water usage across the Mississippi Delta by 20 percent before 2020. In order to accomplish this, the company developed software technology, provided to farmers free of charge, which helps farmers maximize the efficiency of polytube irrigations systems and reduce water consumption.
The City of Fayetteville was the winner of the TECHe Award.
The HyDOZ (hyper-concentrated dissolved ozone) Disinfection System is a proprietary technology for ozonating water and wastewater. The system was developed by BlueInGreen, an Arkansas company in Northwest Arkansas. The City of Fayetteville, in looking for a replacement for the aged ultraviolet disinfection system at the Paul R. Noland Water Resource Recovery Facility, allowed a large-scale pilot of the HyDOZ system. The pilot study was a success and in June 2017 the City of Fayetteville celebrated the successful installation and operation of a full-scale HyDOZ Disinfection System. It is stated to be the first of its kind to be installed in a wastewater treatment facility.
Arkansas Rural Internet Service (“ARIS”) was named the winner of the E2 Award. ARIS is the first partnership in the U.S. between an electric company, Ouachita Electric Cooperative (“OECC”), and a local telephone and internet provider, South Arkansas Telephone Company (“SATCO”). Through collaboration, SATCO built a three-acre, 120 kilowatt solar farm, and OECC is providing its existing electric poles to run the fiber optic cable. ARIS expects to provide high-speed internet service to 4000 or more residents in a rural, five-county area of South Arkansas. Due to the low cost of solar power and the avoidance of a need to trench and bury the fiber optic cable, the costs to customers are kept at a minimum.
The recipients of the inaugural ADEQuest Science Award were Meghana Bollimpalli and Little Rock Central High School. Bollimpalli’s project addressed a growing global energy demand through the development of supercapacitors. She was able, through her experiment, to make the design of supercapacitors more environmentally friendly by using waste byproducts and the use of a commercial microwave. Central High School received a $500 award to the school science program. Bollimpalli received $500 for use for education purposes.
A copy of the news release can be downloaded here.
