STRONGER TOGETHER

We are committed to excellence in meeting the current moment’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) needs.

Nexom’s impact on the world 

…is much bigger than the aeration systems we supply or numbers that show up on financial statements. As a part of the Axius Water platform, we are part of a global team that is meeting some of the critical challenges of our time with energy, determination, and creativity, at a growing scale that is making a real difference. Stronger Together, Axius Water’s 2022 Sustainability Report, shares the depth and breadth of how our platform is collectively addressing these challenges. You can download the report in full, but make sure to scroll down to discover how Nexom specifically is contributing. 

From the Axius Water CEO 

“Our common cause is to make the world a better place by helping our customers preserve the one precious resource essential for human health and survival: water.”

– Chris McIntire, Axius Water CEO

Restoring the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

This once-vital ecosystem is bouncing back thanks in small part to our collective action.

Encompassing nearly 4,500 square miles…

…the massive Chesapeake Bay is the birthplace of much of the shrimp, oysters, and other aquatic life in the northern Atlantic Ocean. However, the rivers that flow into the Bay are laden with pollutants from the enormous 64,000 square mile Chesapeake Bay watershed, which extends from Delaware, the District of Columbia, and Maryland into Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and even New York. Nutrient pollutants (i.e., nitrogen, phosphorous, and ammonia), including fertilizer from farms as far away as New York State, collect in the Bay, where they create hypoxic or dead zones that kill fish and harm other aquatic life.

When a U.S. Department of Defense military base needed to comply with new water quality standards imposed by the Maryland Department of the Environment, the engineers at its wastewater treatment facility turned to Nexom...  

Why is the Chesapeake Bay so important?

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest of more than 100 estuaries in the United States. As such a large estuary, the Bay impacts the health and safety of 18 million people who live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed as well as thousands of species of animals and plants. The Bay also supports the seafood, recreation, and tourism industries, making it an important economic resource.

ESG Impact Summary

We'll keep it brief. After all, when ESG is in all you do, explaining our ESG activity would require explaining everything.

Environmental Performance 

Water Quality Management

By helping its customers reduce pollution and improve water quality, Axius Water contributes to measurable progress toward SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. Nexom and EDI design, manufacture, install, and service simple and sustainable technologies that enable small and remote communities to manage local waterway impacts with limited resources effectively. 

“I come to work excited every day, knowing that I am making a difference in the world by helping our clients achieve cleaner water. I’m grateful that my education and experience enable me to help people and our planet.”Tanner Devlin, P.Eng., Ph.D., Nexom Regional Sales Manager

Regulatory Compliance 

We provide services and products our clients use to monitor and manage the quality of their wastewater discharge to comply with regulatory quality standards. Nexom and EDI’s sales and applications teams monitor changes to North American effluent discharge regulations at the federal, state, and provincial levels and develop strategies to help customers achieve compliance. 

Climate Impact 

Axius Water strives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both directly in operations and through the implementation of technologies at customer sites. 

Waste Management 

While most of our operations do not involve or generate significant amounts of waste, we employ policies and procedures as necessary for the treatment, handling, storage, disposal, and regulatory compliance related to hazardous and nonhazardous waste, including chemicals. Nexom and EDI meet all requirements for the disposal of hazardous waste from operations. Most production processes do not produce hazardous waste.

Want to learn more?

We can’t cover all the ESG activities undertaken by Nexom here, but you can learn more about them in the “Stronger Together” 2022 Sustainability Overview.

Valuing People 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 

We focus on creating a workplace in which employees feel welcome, affirmed, and safe. Axius Water is committed to creating workplaces that welcome and support people of all backgrounds. We are looking to implement DEI training at Nexom.

Worker Well-being 

Our goal and responsibility is to return our valued employees safe and healthy to their families and loved ones every day. We maintain robust health and safety programs that incorporate industry best practices and closely monitor our performance. Nexom had zero recordable incidents and achieved its goal of exceeding a 95% score for Manitoba Heavy Construction Association’s COR™ safety certification. Reach out to our HR team to see about joining our growing team 

Responsible Business 

We operate according to the principles of responsibility and reliability so stakeholders can depend on us.

Sustainability, Governance, and Strategy 

We place consideration of ESG issues at the forefront of everything we do because we believe it’s the right thing to do. While responsibility for Axius’ ESG performance is shared by the Axius Water leadership team, in 2021, the company appointed the senior vice president of operations to lead and coordinate Axius’ ESG initiatives. Our board of directors reviews Axius’ ESG performance as part of its quarterly business planning and review process. 

Business Continuity 

We strive to build operational resilience and maintain business continuity because wastewater treatment facilities must operate continuously, through all weather conditions, and thus require an uninterrupted supply of consistent quality products. Nexom strives to build operational resilience and maintain business continuity to assure that we can deliver critical raw materials even during market disruptions. 

Supply Chain Management 

Like Axius Water’s other operating companies, Nexom took steps to strengthen oversight of labor, human rights, environmental, and diversity issues with our respective supply chains in 2021. We took steps to strengthen oversight of labor, human rights, environmental, and diversity issues with our supply chains in 2021, with ATAC leading the way. 

Risk Management

At both the platform and operating company levels, Axius Water’s senior leaders take various actions to identify, assess, and manage ESG and other risks and opportunities. For example, in 2021, Axius recognized a risk management vulnerability and identified the need to more clearly articulate the scope and limits of authority delegated by Axius across the day-to-day operations of our companies. In response, in early 2020, we developed and adopted a Delegation of Authority policy covering commercial transactions, capital expenditures, employment matters, banking/treasury/investment matters, contributions and changes to the corporate structure, legal entities, and mergers and acquisitions.

Serving Customers 

We draw on decades of experience to create economical, effective, and sustainable solutions for clean water. Our customers define success using many terms, such as SOTE, power, space, NPV, Total N, P, BOD, and TSS. These terms may be rather technical, but what our customers really want is a positive outcome, not a product. Our highly experienced professionals offer deep application knowledge backed by unique services and technologies to assist our clients in providing cleaner, healthier water in communities around the world. We design and implement innovative, cost-effective, sustainable solutions that help clients maintain compliance of the contaminants and nutrients that regulators are targeting today and into the future. Our ability to solve customer problems is evidenced by the number of Axius professionals who previously worked for one of our customers and were so impressed with our service level that they chose to join our team and provide that service level to other customers. 

Building Local Economies 

Nexom has deep roots in its local and regional community. We contribute to vibrant economies by providing rewarding careers, depending on local suppliers, and contributing to the expansion of U.S. exports.

Applications Knowledge 

Axius professionals offer highly specialized technical expertise to help plant engineers and operators use our products and achieve their effluent performance objectives. Collaborating as a united team, our professionals can offer a portfolio of proprietary technologies for cleaner water so that our customers can confidently meet and exceed their treatment needs. Nexom customers have the opportunity to engage with experts in biological and filtration wastewater processes. Two Nexom application specialists have master’s degrees in wastewater treatment, three have PhDs in the field, and some possess more than 30 years of industry experience. Chat with one of our specialists today to learn more.

Research-Based Solutions 

In addition to conducting disciplined Research and Development and extensive analysis of customer-specific needs, we can draw on years of data from dozens of full-scale installations that have been meeting rigorous regulations and recognized academic authorities and regulatory agencies. Nexom’s proprietary SAGR® technology is featured in a 2021 EPA report analyzing the performance of five facilities in the U.S. and one facility in Canada over a three-year period. Each case study spotlights facilities that have implemented innovative technologies or process enhancements designed to significantly intensify treatment or enhance the removal of nitrogen or phosphorus. Read more in Innovative Nutrient Removal Technologies: Case Studies of Intensified or Enhanced Treatment (EPA, August 2021). Read more about these facilities and SAGR technology. 

Innovating for a Better Tomorrow 

We offer proprietary, eco-friendly treatment products and services that can replace outdated methods with current best practices and utilize information technology to enhance and remotely control process management. 

“….we value the voice of the customer and look beyond what standard “commodity” systems can offer. We have almost 50 years of aeration innovation and have always placed the highest regard on value for our customers while simultaneously recognizing our corporate mission: being good stewards of the environment.”Patrick Ely, Nexom Regional Sales Manager 

Nexom is the exclusive source for both SAGR®, a simple, powerful tool that enables lagoons to treat wastewater in any climate effectively, and Blue PRO®, which removes phosphorus to ultra-low levels and is used to efficiently meet North America’s lowest phosphorus limit of <0.02 mg/L. Learn more about Blue PRO technology and phosphorus removal.

Water Infrastructure Investments 

In response to prolonged underinvestment in water infrastructure in the United States, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law enacted in 2022 delivers more than $50 billion to the EPA to improve U.S. drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure. Axius companies are advising and assisting customers on how we can best access and utilize funding from the single largest investment in water that the U.S. federal government has ever made. Nexom, like all the Axius operating companies, possess innovative water treatment technology that can help customers achieve aggressive clean water goals and build future-focused solutions for the 21st century. As U.S.-based manufacturers, both EDI and Nexom produce clean water technologies that are eligible for projects funded under the Build America, Buy America Act, which is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Find which Nexom technology can meet the needs of your BABA-funded wastewater project.

Nexom in Action: Park View, Iowa

Nexom's simple but powerful solution helps this small community achieve clean water despite cold weather.

Annual nutrient removal capacity:

kg of nitrogen

kg of carbon

Meeting low ammonia levels…

…as required by the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit levels is challenging for small communities such as the Park View Water and Sanitary District in Iowa. With a small facility and budget to match, Park View relies on aerated lagoon systems that provide some ammonia removal in warmer months but are generally incapable of meeting ammonia limits during periods of low water temperatures.

To remedy this gap, Park View engaged a regional engineering firm that, in turn, tapped Nexom for its specialized expertise. Nexom’s experienced professionals designed a solution that would retain the simplicity and low maintenance nature of the lagoon system while dramatically increasing its ability to reduce ammonia as well as suspended solids and total nitrogen. Using diffusers suspended from floating laterals, the system is easy for operators to maintain from the water surface. The new system was commissioned in December 2021, preparing Park View for the cold winter weather and enabling it to achieve compliance with the 2016 update to the Iowa DNR New Technology Assessment No. 11. This is one recent example of how Nexom positively impacts the environment by creating simple yet powerful solutions that meet or exceed industry regulations while serving consulting engineers, municipalities, and industrial clients.

Looking Ahead 

While we are pleased with our recent accomplishments, we keep our sights focused on achieving more for our customers, employees, and communities. We’re developing additional ESG goals and implementing ways to track our progress. We will intensify our focus on operations as well as outcomes achieved through our work for customers. And we plan to roll out DEI policies to guide our efforts and document our progress as we strive to diversify our workforce and ensure equity in our workplace. In each of these endeavors, we are stronger together as we strive toward our common missions.