Elbow Beach Hotel celebrated the completion of the construction of its new waste water treatment plant with a roof wetting ceremony on Friday.

In what project manager Lloyd Andukow called "the first of its kind on the Island", the new system will curb the hotel's waste water as well as reduce its water usage.

General Manager Frank Stoek heralded the opening as part of the hotel's "commitment to Bermuda's marine environment".

The state of the art water treatment facility, which was designed and installed by Kofta Technologies of Dalton, Massachusetts, replaces the old waste system which had piped sewage 800 yards out to sea.

With the capability of processing 60,000 gallons of sewage in 24 hours, the new facility will yield an end product which Stoek says "will be nothing but pure water".

Through equipment shipped in from the US, the hotel's waste will be processed and purified. The water resulting from the system will ultimately be used for irrigating the hotel's gardens, thus shrinking Elbow's demand for water.

At a cost of $1.4 million the new plant is housed in a traditional Bermudian-style building on the hotel's grounds and will be fully operational by the end of next month, after a series of tests are held.