Waste Management – Wisconsin

Offshoots, Inc, collaborated with with Sand Creek Consultants and the Cornerstone Group to design a phytoremediation project for water and soil cleansing at a Waste Management truck storage facility outside Milwaukee, WI. Water from cleaning the trucks was running off  8 acres of pavement, leaching into the local environment and ending up in Lake Michigan. Offshoots, Inc, helped design the phytoremediation installation to clean up the wastewater stream with a plant-based system, so the water runoff moves through a series of phytoremediation and rhizofiltration treatment trains.

Approximately 12 phytotechnology typologies are used to treat the water before its eventual release.  The contaminated water first moves through a degradation hedge of cottonwood trees, followed by degradation buffers, herbaceous filters, tile drains, bioswales, degradation willow plantings, and finishing with a constructed wetland. The whole project is surrounded by a Wisconsin native prairie pollinator meadow: a low maintenance, low water-use grassland of native plantings chosen to support local pollinators year-round.