RUMFORD – NewPage Corp. chemical engineer Michael Sinclair of Auburn is flattered to be recognized by Maine as an environmental “hero” whose innovative leadership is helping to clean up the Androscoggin River.

“It’s pretty cool,” Sinclair, 34, said on Tuesday afternoon about being named an Unsung Hero of Clean Water by Gov. John Baldacci at last Thursday’s Maine Department of Environmental Protection event along the Kennebec River in Augusta.

Sinclair was one of five people honored on the 35th anniversary of the signing of U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie’s Clean Water Act of 1972.

“Your inventive thinking represents the many Maine companies that see opportunity in our shared interests in protecting one of Maine’s most prized natural resources, our rivers,” Baldacci said of Sinclair at the ceremony.

On Tuesday, Sinclair insisted that more than 1,000 co-workers played a role in significantly reducing the Rumford paper mill’s phosphorous discharge into the Androscoggin River.

“I was fortunate to get singled out. (However,) the environmental work we do is done as a team and is something everyone in the mill deserves credit for. Nobody does anything alone in a mill this big,” said the 1995 University of Maine at Orono graduate.

Without resorting to costly equipment, NewPage lowered its nutrient discharge from a historical summer average of 300 pounds a day to 50 pounds daily – well below the state’s daily minimum level of 150 pounds – and long before the Maine Department of Environmental Protection finalized that permitting requirement.

“The Rumford mill took it upon themselves several years out to tackle the problem and were successful in doing it. They proved it could be done,” Dave Courtemanch, DEP Bureau of Land and Water Quality director of environmental assessment, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

That’s why Sinclair was recognized, according to DEP Land and Water Quality Director Andrew Fisk.

“Mike’s story is a good example of an industrial waste-management environmental team at a mill that was willing to take a risk and not accept conventional wisdom,” Fisk said Tuesday evening by telephone.

Essentially, Sinclair and his team placed good bacteria in the mill’s wastewater treatment plant on a strict diet, carefully maintaining a delicate balance of nutrients, temperatures and microbiology needed to increase efficiency in paper-working and wastewater treatment.

“We took a risk and basically got some results that were good for us. We didn’t make wild and crazy moves. We had experts monitoring it, did lots of tests and kept the DEP informed. We also shared this with other facilities,” Sinclair said.

Conventional science for pulp-and-paper wastewater treatment plants has been to provide nutrients to the billions of microorganisms that digest wastewater.

Pulp-and-paper wastewater doesn’t contain the right nutrients, so, they must be added to keep the good bugs happy, Fisk said.

Excess nutrients are removed through additional treatment at the end of the pipe discharging cleaned water into waterways.

Adding the wrong amount of nutrients can create less favorable bugs, one species of which causes sludge to float, thereby violating pollution-control licenses, Fisk said.

“They ran their phosphorous at a level that was a lot lower than what people thought was safe and, they were able to do it and meet their effluent limits. It is a very elegant solution and is what we wanted people to realize. Mike and the Rumford mill deserve the acknowledgment,” Fisk added.