MARYSVILLE — Mayor Jon Nehring recently presented a city employee with a “Dare to Soar” Innovative Service Award for efforts that led to significant energy cost savings at the Marysville Waste Water Treatment Plant.

Waste Water Treatment Plant lead worker and 16-year employee Jeff Cobb applied with Snohomish County PUD in early 2013 through an Energy Efficiency Rebate Incentive Program that would generate energy cost savings by installing dissolved oxygen probes in the plant’s complete-mix aerated cells at the treatment plant.

Aerators keep the pond aerobic, with a strong dissolved oxygen content to maintain healthy BOD breakdown, which in turn eliminates odor. That process has been in place at the plant for years, and now it’s saving money with the new probes.

The reduction in power usage that has resulted from these probes is so impressive that the PUD will rebate the city for the entire cost of purchasing the probes, according to Nehring. PUD has projected the power savings costs to be about $60,000 per year.

“This type of innovative thinking and ingenuity deserves recognition due to the significance of the cost savings realized by the city,” Nehring said, before presenting Cobb the award.

The Dare to Soar Awards acknowledge exceptional employee performance and innovative ways of conducting the public’s business that yield cost savings in city budgets, improve service delivery, increase productivity, and are beneficial to citizens overall. The city encourages employees to come up with ideas for ways to cut down costs in their departments.

Cobb was nominated by Public Works Superintendent Doug Byde, who ran the Waste Water Treatment Plant for several years previously.