Talking about a town's wastewater treatment facility may not always be pleasant. But the town of Williamson's plant is committed to reducing it's carbon footprint by "going green" and it's stirring up quite the buzz.

The wastewater treatment plant in the town of Williamson was built in the late 70's. Now, it's being retrofitted with the latest "green" technology.

"If we can make the environment a little better or pollute it a little less and plus make the rates a little cheaper then that's our goal and that's what we did," Jim Hoffman, Williamson Town Supervisor said.

Hoffman says installing the green infrastructure was in the best interest of the taxpayers.

"Well, the stimulus funding was three quarters of a million dollars. There was a match required from the town which was ten percent which was a little under $80,000," Hoffman said.

The project that cost nearly $800,000 has three new elements; solar panels, a green rooftop, and energy efficient lighting.

"We don't know how much energy costs are going to be in the future," said engineer Ram Shrivastava. "We know it's going to be higher, why not do something now to control it?"

Shrivastava says wastewater treatment plants are typically large energy consumers. To offset that cost, Williamson is producing it's own with solar panels.

Assuming that there are seven hours of adequate sunlight everyday, these solar panels could reduce energy consumption by 15 percent. That would save nearly $10,000 a year.

Williamson hopes to break even on it's investment in only a couple of years.

"The ultimate goal of the project is to be net zero after five years. So you can produce as much as you consume," Shrivastava said.

But it doesn't stop there. Supervisor Hoffman is looking at other green elements.

"We're going to take a look at wind turbines. I guess technology now, they are smaller and I think fewer people would object to the presence of them," Hoffman said.