Brightwater habitat project draws international visitors

An extensive habitat restoration project on the Brightwater Treatment Plant site that includes 43 acres of open space, trails and rebuilt salmon stream corridors recently garnered international interest.

In February, the site was toured by a team of South Korean professors, graduate students and landscape architecture and land management professionals who were in the United States to learn about sustainable development and habitat restoration.

Led by Dr. Kwi-Gon Kim, a professor of landscape architecture at Seoul National University, the group’s eight-day study tour was sponsored in part by the United Nations’ UN-HABITAT Sustainable Cities Program and the Korea Land Corporation.

The group wanted to visit a large-scale habitat restoration project and chose the Brightwater site because of its green development techniques.

The Brightwater North Mitigation Area was among several restoration projects and low-impact development sites visited by Dr. Kim and his team as they collected information to help plan a new ecologically friendly city in the Gangwon Province of South Korea. The group also gathered teaching resources for the new Gangwon Province International Urban Training Center, which UN-HABITAT expects to open in May.

The tour was arranged by Linda Krippner from ESA Adolfson, a consultant who worked as a biologist on the Brightwater restoration site project.

People enjoy clean water and a healthy environment because of King County's wastewater treatment program. The county’s Wastewater Treatment Division protects public health and water quality by serving 17 cities, 17 local sewer utilities and more than 1.4 million residents in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. Formerly called Metro, the regional clean-water agency now operated by King County has been preventing water pollution for more than 40 years.

-###-

Note to editors and reporters: Visit the WTD Newsroom, a portal to information for the news media about the Wastewater Treatment Division, King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks: http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wtd/newsroom/.