A new wastewater chamber in Washington, D.C., has been developed to replace a wastewater treatment facility that the Obama administration shut down in 2014.
The chamber is equipped with a pressure-sensing device that detects odors and reacts to them to stop pollution, and the EPA estimates it will save the city up to $1 billion over the next five years.
The EPA also hopes to use the chamber to clean up contaminated water around the nation.
The new wastewater chambers have been touted by the Obama Administration as an important tool for improving air quality, but many critics have questioned their effectiveness, arguing that the new technologies aren’t up to the job.
The Obama administration said it had found that wastewater treatment plants were inefficient and that wastewater from sewage tanks is generally more polluted than treated wastewater from wells and other sources.
The White House has also said that the administration’s new efforts to combat climate change would result in more pollution, but it has yet to release a full report on how much climate change could contribute to the problem.
The government shut down the wastewater treatment facilities in 2014 to try to reduce the nation’s pollution from sewage.
