Stantec is deploying AI at two major U.S. wastewater plants in a 31-month program led for the Water Research Foundation and co-funded by WSSC Water and Prince William Water. The project will embed EAOS AI engines at WSSC Water’s Piscataway Water Resource Recovery Facility in Maryland and Prince William Water’s H.L. Mooney Advanced Water Reclamation Facility in Virginia to deliver real-time guidance on process stability and operator support.
“Our goal is to turn data into action,” said Stantec’s global water practice lead. “EAOS models will sit alongside plant control systems and give operators a live window into what’s likely to happen next—allowing them to intervene before excursions occur.”
The initiative introduces Intelligent Assets, lightweight digital tools designed to modernize infrastructure without ripping out legacy hardware. Early trials at Piscataway have already shown the AI flagging rising effluent ammonia 45 minutes before conventional alarms, giving operators time to adjust aeration blowers and avoid permit violations.
Prince William Water’s team will test the same tools on biological phosphorus removal, where rapid influent changes can destabilize nutrient-removal bacteria. “We’re not replacing operators,” said a Prince William Water process engineer. “We’re giving them a second set of eyes that never blinks.”
By project end, the partners will publish a WRF research report and an open Utility AI Implementation Playbook containing step-by-step templates, case studies, and ROI calculators aimed at midsize utilities that have hesitated to adopt AI. The playbook will stress data-quality checklists and change-management playbooks—critical hurdles the team says are often overlooked.
WSSC Water’s deputy director of water resources added, “We want every utility to be able to replicate this without a multimillion-dollar data-science team. That’s why we’re building the playbook with plain-language language and open-source code samples.”