Walter F. Bailey is Assistant General Manager of the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water). Mr. Bailey is responsible for the management of the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, as well as the Authority’s Biosolids Management Program, Process Engineering Department, Laboratory, and Process Research and Development Program, and its Industrial Pretreatment Program. He is responsible for managing a budget of approximately $120 million and a staff of 264 employees.

Mr. Bailey has served as manager of DC Water’s Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility for over 20 years. Blue Plains has a design capacity of 370 MGD and serves 2.2 million people in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Under Mr. Bailey’s leadership, the Blue Plains Facility implemented advanced wastewater treatment in the 1980s when nitrification and filtration were added to the 370 mgd plant making it the largest advanced wastewater treatment facility in the world. Blue Plains then added nitrogen removal using a unique process that enabled it to quickly comply with the Chesapeake Bay cleanup goals. Because of these efforts, The District of Columbia became the first Bay jurisdiction to meet the nutrient reduction goals. Blue Plains continues to achieve award winning performance including NACWA Platinum awards.

DC Water has been very active under Mr. Bailey’s leadership in developing process technology. Numerous partnerships have been formed with WERF, various universities, and other utilities to evaluate technologies. The results of these projects have been published and presented at many conferences worldwide. Examples of these efforts include significant work on nitrogen removal and advanced anaerobic digestion. For these and other efforts, DC Water has received awards and recognition for being a leader in wastewater treatment technology and management, for example; the American Academy of Environmental Engineers Excellence in Environmental Engineering Grand Prize in 2012 for Research on Energy Neutrality and in 2013 for Research on Mainstream Deammonification.

Mr. Bailey has received several professional awards from the Water Environment Federation including: the Emerson Medal, the Hatfield Award, the Bedell Award, the Schroepfer Award, the Gascoigne Medal, and the Fuhrman Medal for Joint Research with Universities (Virginia Tech). He also served as President of the Chesapeake Water Environment Association. He has a total of more than 40 years experience in wastewater treatment engineering and management.

Mr. Bailey holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from George Washington University. He is a Licensed Professional Engineer, a Licensed Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator, and a Board Certified Environmental Engineer. He has received two U.S. patents for developing treatment processes at Blue Plains and is the author or coauthor of more than 75 technical presentations and publications.