Former Councilwoman Ann Kulchin Honored for Environmental Achievements

Former Carlsbad City Councilwoman Ann Kulchin received the 2013 National Environmental Achievement Award during the association’s National Environment Policy Forum Tuesday, April 23, at the Washington Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The award recognizes Kulchin for work that led to “historic water quality improvements in north San Diego County’s unique ocean, beach and estuarine environments,” said the award nomination. 

Kulchin was first elected to the Carlsbad City Council in 1980 and retired in 2012, and for 22 of those years she served as one of Carlsbad’s two delegates on the board of the Encina Wastewater Authority, a joint powers authority owned by six public agencies: the cities of Carlsbad, Vista and Encinitas, the Vallecitos Water District, the Buena Sanitation District, and the Leucadia Wastewater District. During her time on the Encina board, the authority achieved significant milestones in cleaning wastewater and protecting the Pacific Ocean. From 1980-83 she worked to persuade her fellow board members to invest in secondary treatment, and today Encina removes more than 96 percent of solids from the plant’s effluent. Other accomplishments included:

• The replacement of drinking water with recycled water in the treatment process
• Three plant expansions that quadrupled capacity to accommodate growth
• The use of methane gas from the waste as fuel to generate electricity, coupled with the use of heat exhaust from the cogeneration plant to dry waste sludge
• The manufacture of pellets made from solid waste, which the authority sells as biofuel and fertilizer

Encina General Manager Kevin Hardy credited Kulchin with setting the authority on a visionary path that has placed it in the forefront of similarly sized wastewater treatment agencies. “Ann Kulchin was a leader in getting Encina to a secondary treatment level very early,” said Hardy. “That was not easy. There were concerns over the cost and environmental benefits, and studies today show that secondary treatment was good for the North County ocean environment.” 

Kulchin said that she was motivated by the need to keep the ocean waters and beaches as clean as possible, and stressed a collaborative approach to solving problems. “We were among the first to initiate secondary treatment, and we wanted to be careful about the outfall,” Kulchin said, referring to the pipe that carries effluent offshore. Hardy said that Kulchin also was instrumental in increasing the professionalism of Encina’s workforce through training and education. “Selecting the right people to do the jobs, investing in workforce education and training, and making Encina a place people wanted to work were important,” Kulchin said. 

In March 2009, Encina became a forerunner in producing biosolid pellets from solid waste, which the agency sells as biofuel to a cement factory in Victorville, and as fertilizer to local farms. This process saves ratepayers an estimated $2 million a year in energy costs. The treatment facility’s cogeneration plant, which uses the waste’s methane gas as fuel to generate electricity and the plant’s heat exhaust to dry the sludge, saves ratepayers another $2 million annually. Encina’s innovations have earned the authority many accolades, including Clean Water Act awards from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2000 and 2006, Green Power Leadership Club recognition from the EPA in 2011, and Plant of the Year from the California Water Environment Association three times, most recently in 2011.

As a Carlsbad council member Kulchin supported development of a water recycling program, which today reuses more than half of the Carlsbad Municipal Water District’s wastewater to irrigate parks, golf courses, medians and freeway landscaping. She also supported the formation of foundations that support programs to protect the Buena Vista, Agua Hedionda and Batiquitos Lagoons. Kulchin’s contributions will serve future generations, Hardy said. “I’ve lived here long enough to know that our beaches and ocean waters are improved by her work.” Located on Avenida Encinas in Carlsbad, the Encina Water Pollution Control Facility serves approximately 350,000 residents, treating 25 million gallons a day with a capacity of 40.5 million gallons a day. 

–City of Carlsbad