The Brightwater treatment facilities are uniquely connected to their site through natural and constructed landscape elements like wetlands, stormwater ponds, and overlooks, as well as plantings that are integrated into the built areas. Photo: Benjamin Benschneider
Americans’ distaste for all things toilet-related goes deep. Even today, the marketing of toilet paper depends on squeezability, babies, and cartoon bears. The whole nature of human defecation remains somewhat unmentionable, hidden in private places, imbued with code language (restroom, powder room, lavatory, water closet, etcetera) and dismissed with the magical act of the flush.
Beneath this cloak of cultural secrecy lies the problem, one that has had a tremendous effect on the environment. In an effort to “disappear” our waste, cities historically have dumped raw sewage into waterways, threatening wildlife and posing serious health issues to humans as well. Which is why Woodinville, Washington’s Brightwater Wastewater Treatment Plant, possibly the most sophisticated and certainly the most beautiful sewer plant ever built, turns the whole mystery of wastewater on its head. Since opening its Mithun-designed, LEED Platinum Environmental Education and Community Center in 2011, the place has become so popular that it regularly hosts classes, provides habitat for salmon, and even serves as an event venue for weddings.
Yes, brides in white arrive by limo while millions of gallons of sewage per day flow by them via an underground tunnel 18 feet in diameter, the product of 105,000 homes in Seattle metro’s King and Snohomish counties. When weddings are not underway, the on-site educational facility teaches 10,000 program participants that a flush is not a metaphysical disappearance act, but instead an imperfect part of the water cycle.