CWEA Wastewater Professional :: April 2014 March 2014 Volume 2 | Page 13

Feature Article | CWEA’s First “Plant of the Year” Award, 1929

CWEA’s First “Plant of the Year”
Award, 1929
By Dr. Nicholas Pinhey, CWEA History Committee

The CSWA (CWEA) 1929 “Plant of the Year”
Award Winner
And the Winner is…the U.C. Davis Sewage
Treatment Plant!
“The board of directors will award the Wallace
& Tiernan bronze plaque to the best maintained
and operated sewage treatment plant during 1930.
The first award of this plaque (for 1929) was made
last year at Sacramento to the U.C. Farm sewage treatment plant at Davis, John Jacobsen (sic)
superintendent. A cash prize of $25, donated by
the manufacturer members of the association, was
also presented to John Jacobsen (sic). A similar
cash prize will be awarded at the spring meeting
(California Sewage Works Journal, 1929, Vol. III,
No. 1, p. 7).”
CWEA’s Plant of the Year Award program is almost as old as the Association itself. One of the first
actions taken by the newly established California
Sewage Works Association’s (CSWA) Board of Directors was the approval of an annual “Award of Merit”
to recognize the “best maintained and operated
sewage treatment plant” in California each year –
thus the CSWA Award of Merit is the source of our
CWEA “Plant of the Year” awards.
Fittingly, the CSWA’s Award of Merit inaugural
year (1929) was also the first year for the Academy
of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ “Academy
Awards” (the “Oscars”). The reason it is fitting (besides sharing the same inaugural year) is that this
article was inspired by a 1930 motion picture of
the first CSWA Award of Merit facilities – the U.C.
Davis Sewage Treatment Plant. Thanks to the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County (LACSD) and
Tom Parker, the CWEA History Committee was able

to obtain a series of films highlighting treatment
and collection system tours that were made as
part of the 1930 CSWA spring and fall conferences.
The cameraman for these films was LACSD’s future
General Manager A.M. Rawn, who went on to serve
as our Association president in 1936 and Federation president in 1943. While researching the 1930
spring conference films, the History Committee
discovered the story of the first “Plant of the Year,”
and learned how the award originated along with
the story of our Association’s early leaders, CSWA
past-president John Jacobson (U.C. Davis Superintendent of Construction and manager of the U.C.
Davis sewage treatment plant).
Origin of the California Sewage Works Association’s Award of Merit
In 1930, the Association’s first Secretary-Treasurer, Edward A. Reinke, described the mission of the
CSWA as “creating a new vision of sewage disposal
and, by an interchange of ideas of those interested,
bringing about better operation of sewage disposal plants in our state (California Sewage Works
Journal, 1930, Vol. III, No. 1).” In 1929, the CSWA
Board of Directors decided that an award program
would help support the mission of the Association
through promoting the proper operation and maintenance of sewage treatment plants, by providing
information to the membership about outstanding
operations and maintenance practices, inspiring
plant operations and maintenance staff to improve
and take pride in their facilities through the awards
competition and by helping to secure the support
of elected officials for funding sewage treatment
plants by raising their awareness of the importance
Wastewater Professional April 2014

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