December 12, 2010

Clark named Fluvanna Business Person of 2010 –At its annul Christmas Party on December 12 held at the Lake Monticello Clubhouse, the Fluvanna County Chamber of Commerce awarded its annual Business Person of the Year award to Mike Clark, President of Enviro-Klean Company. The award was presented to Clark by Fluvanna Chamber President Cheryl Martino, vice president of Union First Market Bank. She recognized him not only for his leadership in using Enviro-Klean technology to bring business to the Zion Crossroads area, but for activities involving his construction company, Starlite Construction. Clark and his partner, Bill Anderson, also developed Starlite Industrial Park just south of Zion Crossroads in Fluvanna County. Another partner, Scott and Denise Beynon, his daughter and son-in-law, founded and operate Starlite Heating and Air.   Clark also was recognized for his most recent contribution to the economic health of Fluvanna County and the region with his plans to bring the main training facility for the National Center for Law Enforcement to the county. The multi-million dollar facility will be designed to train law enforcement officers from throughout the world in the latest in technology related to maintaining law and order in local communities. The facilities will be located on a 100 acre parcel of land between Kents Store and Ferncliff.  Clark has been active in county government affairs, helping develop the last two county comprehensive plans. He and his wife Irene make their home in rural Kents Store.

On Friday, December 10, Enviro-Klean President Mike Clark, Sr.,  himself a Virginia Department of Health certified Onsite Sewage System Operator, conducted a training session for county health officials from Central Virginia on innovations in designing and installing Alternative Onsite Sewage Systems.  At the request of regional Health Department Official Ed Dunn, Clark conducted the session at the site of the “By the River Restaurant” on James Madison Highway in Buckingham County. Enviro-Klean Company, using a creative engineering design, manufactured and installed a wastewater treatment system at the facility more than a year ago. Using a unique design, the company was able to provide the owners of the historic tavern a way to turn it into a modern day restaurant even though standard septic systems would not work and no large central sewage system was available.  The event wound up with a luncheon and the awarding of two hours of credit for the continuing certification each of the health department employees.

The Company just received a copy of the Virginia Department of Health’s approval of a design for an alternative onsite sewage system for a homeowner in Fauquier County which will use a “constructed wetland” for the disposal of the clear liquid effluent produced by the system. This is the second approval for the disposal method considered until recently experimental, though it has been a preferred method of effluent disposal in Europe for a number of years. The first such system installed by Enviro-Klean was approved in 2008 and has been in operation for more than a year between the I-64 exit at Ferncliff and Kents Store.

Company President Mike Clark says he sees constructed wetlands as an ever more

preferred system of effluent disposal as people discover the superior environmental nature of the process.

“Using wetlands we not only take care of the liquid effluent in an efficient manner,” Clark said, “ but we eliminate the migration of nitrates – the culprit in clogging our streams and Chesapeake Bay with oxygen-killing algae, as the exotic plants in the wetlands cell devour those nitrates onsite.”

Enviro-Klean Co. has developed a new service contract to meet the requirements of the Virginia Health Department’s new regulations covering requirements that owners of alternative onsite sewage systems to have an ongoing “relationship” with an operator providing maintenance of the systems. As customers’ existing contracts expire, Enviro-Klean is sending all of its more than 150 customers in 15 counties copies of the new contract explaining the new state requirements.

Mike Clark, President of the Enviro-Klean Co., headquartered in Starlite Park near Zion Crossroads, provided the afternoon program for more than 120 members of the Virginia Environmental Health Association attending the group’s Annul Meeting on Friday, November 14 at the new Fluvanna County Library near Palmyra.

Clark’s presentation was on the subject of disposing of sewage effluent in constructed wetlands. His Power Point presentation outlined the advantages of using constructed wetlands as a means of replacing the use of sub-surface drip disposal or standard septic systems.
“The big advantage over the more traditional methods,” Clark told the group composed of health department officials and independent soil scientists, “is that it not only disposes of the the liquids created, but the plants in the wetlands consume the nutrients which feed the algae that are so destructive to bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bay.”

His presentation showed pictures of the “working” constructed wetland which his firm built last year near Kents Store in Fluvanna County.
Following the presentation at the library, the meeting participants traveled to the Kents Store site where they observed the operation of the wetland, asking questions of Clark and his staff. Clark told the attendees that he believed this method of handling waste water without either contaminating ground water and feeding algae blooms is the “wave of the future.”
Enviro-Klean Co. was founded in 2003 and since then has designed, manufactured and installed more than 150 of the systems in rural areas of 14 counties in Central Virginia.