Grant’s Blog

Like my father before me, I like country music.

My interest in C&W is something of an acquired taste. When a Kansas preteen, it was most uncool to listen to anything other than the top 40 music played on KLEO 1480 AM radio. One summer, to show my commitment to pop music, I joined in the competition to suntan the radio station’s call letters on my body.

With the advent of FM radio, I got hooked on “southern rock.” My favorite bands being Pure Prairie League and, some years earlier, the Lovin’ Spoonful. At one time, I pretty much owned everything these bands ever recorded. Other favorite bands included: Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Crosby Stills & Nash, and Marshall Tucker.

The evolution is complete. Nowadays I listen to two kinds of music: country and western.

I like the sound and the stories. Although not technically a “country and western” song, Dan Hick’s & His Hot Lick’s 1970s tune “How can I miss you when you won’t go away?” pretty much epitomizes what country music is all about. It remains my all time favorite song title.

Which brings me to another, somewhat relevant, expression – “you can’t get up if you don’t fall down.” Montague (Massachusetts) plant superintendent Bob Trombley recently used this expression to describe his process control strategy. Let me put it in context.

Bob and Chief Plant Operator John Little – a serious misnomer; John is something like 6’4” and 230 pounds – have been experimenting. Not satisfied with single digit effluent TSS and BOD, they and the rest of the Montague staff are constantly experimenting. They’ve been able to remove 50-75% of the incoming nitrogen and a goodly percentage of the phosphorus. Call it their gift to the environment.

For their ratepayers, they’ve slashed sludge disposal and electrical expenses.

Their improvements have not come without some setbacks. In fact, that’s how I became involved. They got to a point where they wanted some outside help. Their philosophy? You guessed it, “you can’t get up if you don’t fall down.”

A good lesson for us all. Even almost 60-year old cynics such as myself.

Thanks for reading.

Grant

Several years ago, one of the auto companies – Ford, I think it was – advertised that “Quality is Job 1.” If my memory serves me correctly, some of the television ads punctuated the statement with a loud sound as the word “Quality” was stamped onto a car or truck. It was an effective slogan.

Any number of organizations promote workplace safety with the theme “Safety is Job 1.” Maybe you have one or two such posters adorning the walls of your wastewater treatment plant.

Which brings me to ask; “As wastewater superintendent, what is your highest priority?” What is “Job 1” at the treatment plant?

Most of us, I’m betting, believe it to be permit compliance. Or, more generically, environmental protection.

At the risk of getting my workplace TP’d*, I disagree. Environmental protection is a critical component of what we do, but I respectfully submit that serving the needs of our community is our highest priority. Environmental protection is a component of community service; a very important component to be sure. But, the highest priority, I submit, is providing wastewater service so that the community can prosper: to effectively and efficiently meet the community’s need for wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal services.

The difference is important.

If environmental protection is job 1, then there is no limit on cost. Our job would be to spend as much money as necessary to make the environment better. And, better. And, better.

If community service is job 1, then it becomes our job to protect the environment at the least possible cost. That is, to optimize. And, compromise. (Compromise, for the record, is not one of my strong suits.)

I’m in the profit business. I pay my bills using money my company makes by assisting municipal wastewater superintendents protect the environment in the most cost effective way. I believe, perhaps naively, that making clean water affordable means that more water will be clean. Which, in turn, means that providing community service is more environmentally sustainable. But… maybe I am just coming up with justifications for what I do.

Regardless. I’ll keep promoting the notion that the most effective wastewater treatment plant operators are those that “tinker” with their facilities in order to produce the highest quality effluent at the least possible cost. To those that do, here’s hat’s off to you.

Thanks for reading.

*Explanation. TP’ing, for those of you who didn’t grow up in the Midwest in the ‘60s, is the practice of looping rolls of toilet paper into trees. A high impact, but otherwise harmless, prank.

Grant

To generate work, my company sends out postcards touting our “brilliance.” Because we are so doggone smart, we make technical presentations at seminars. Some are even worth listening to.

In an effort to keep existing clients happy with our service, we give them our best effort. When we have a story worth telling, we write it up and share it with upper management. We’ve found that people like it when we tell their bosses how they have improved operations without spending much money on new equipment.

On occasion, we’ve been known to buy a pizza or two. Meaning, as consultants go, we are at the cheapskate end of the spectrum.

When I was a municipal wastewater administrator, I partook of some wining and dining. At one WEFTEC conference, my wife and I were treated to an outlandish five course meal at a fancy, big-city rooftop restaurant. Somewhere during the meal, I got a bit uncomfortable with the extravagance.

I’ve found that I’m not the only person that would rather not be showered with gifts.

One plant superintendent told me about how he and one of his staff were taken to a strip club by his municipality’s design engineer. The consultant was plying them with drinks and bills. An odd way of generating wastewater design business methinks.

A consultant I hold in very high regard for his technical expertise once confessed that he had employed women to entertain clients. This man, a sad neurotic genius, is long ago retired. Maybe his story is the reason I’m so tight with the buck; his is not a situation I want to find myself in.

My opinion: municipalities deserve wastewater treatment plants that are reliable, efficient, effective. Like many others in the business, that’s the service we attempt to provide. On occasion, we get one right. And when we do, it is that reputation – a proven ability to deliver quality – that we want to be the measure by which we are judged. Or, maybe if I were more entertaining and a lot better looking, I’d be all for using the social skills I don’t have to dazzle potential clients.

I’m realistic; or, somewhat so. As mentioned in one of my first blog entries, getting public recognition for a job well done is something that so rarely happens in our business that, with time, most of us pretty much give up hope for. We are the poster children for under-appreciated service, are we not?

But.

Peer recognition is different matter. Most wastewater professionals know quality when they see it. As a guy like you – that is, somebody just doing his best to make affordable clean water – it feels really good when a client is truly satisfied with the work.

It’s almost as good as getting paid.

Thanks for reading.

Grant

The Water Planet Company is hiring. We’re looking for mature, reliable people to train as wastewater treatment plant operators. Some need to be licensed, others not.

Unlike last year, we are not posting anything on Craig’s List. When we did, we received over 100 replies. An excellent response. The problem was the quality of the replies.

A few people wrote using complete sentences with proper capitalization, punctuation, and spacing. Of these, several correctly spelled all words! Most applicants sent marginally coherent replies. For ha-ha’s, I kept a few of the more notable emails. A sampling – with names and phone numbers changed – follows.

To Whom It May Concern: Is the wastewater position available? I’d be interested in hearing more about it. You can reach me at my e-mail address or phone (XXX) XXX-XXXX.
Peace and Light. Candice

hi im interested in the job

Hi, My name is Paul Smith and i am 23 years old and i am looking for a job with a company that i can hopefully retire with and move up in.Yes i am still young but i have been working in construction for 8 years now and i am sick and tired of not having a job that is guaranteed 40 hours a week.I am willing to do what i need to get certified in what ever position you may offer.So if you think that am what you are looking for you can contact me on my cell phone(XXX)XXX-XXXX or my email
thanks again,Paul

Good Morning, I have a CDL A license. I worked previously as a propane bulk driver. I am in the process of moving back to eastern ct., from Maine. I will be going back to Me., sometime this week when the power is restored to finalize the move. My cell# XXX-XXX-XXXX. Thank You Deborah

Call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX Brian

This is something I was interested in, can’t afford a college degree, right now. but if this is one of these career, sighn ups, forget it.

hello grant im very interested in the job. please email me or call me.. i moved back here from being in florida for 10 years and need a steady job im not a kid im 46 my # (XXX)XXX-XXXX thanks…..rick

Would be interesting in job. Where are you located to fill application out?

Thanks for reading.

Grant

As a reward for attaining the age of 50, American doctors wish to subject you to a colonoscopy. It’s a marvelous thing. First, you buy a chemical that you mix with huge quantities of water. You drink the solution and hover over the toilet as the remnants of your last year’s food intake drains out of you.

The next day, your friendly doctor’s staff asks you put on an open-in-the-back Johnny and wheels you into a freezing cold room. There, while mercifully sedated, your friendly doctor sends a camera sent up your behind until it arrives in Saint Louis. Unless, of course, you live in St. Louis, in which case the camera stops at Houston.

I’ve twice had the pleasure. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Self induced diarrhea is not pleasant, but what came out of me was nothing compared with what I’ve “experienced” when working in wet wells, headworks structures, and while cleaning anaerobic digesters. During the procedure, I was deeply asleep and for once it was somebody else checking out my pipes.

A colonoscopy is done in the off chance that sleepy, little tumors like the one cut out of my woman last week are hiding inside of us. If they are, they can be removed before they blossom into killers. Last week wasn’t fun for her, but my woman now has the opportunity to live past 60. Meaning, the process was one of the best things she ever did.

At the hospital, my bedside chair faces a vital signs monitor. Information is displayed in the room and at the nurse’s station. If conditions fall outside of a pre-established range, an alarm sounds: locally and remote. No hospital worth checking into would attempt to care for a post-surgery patient without monitoring vitals. And, no intensive care ward would be without remote alarms. The real-time information provides fundamental health care information.

Not unlike the on-line instrumentation, PLC, and SCADA control loops that serve an important role in increasing numbers of municipal wastewater treatment plants. My recent hospital experience reaffirmed my belief in the appropriateness of on-line wastewater monitoring equipment.

More than that. Optimizing wastewater treatment, maximizing efficiency, providing the best possible effluent quality requires real-time water quality data.

Depending upon permit conditions, some of the most important parameters that should be continuously monitored include: influent pH, ammonia, and ortho-phosphate; aeration tank dissolved oxygen (DO); anoxic tank ORP; mixed liquor TSS; clarifier sludge blanket depth; and effluent ammonia, nitrate, ortho-phosphate, pH, and TSS.

It makes no more sense for a municipal superintendent to operate wastewater treatment equipment without the benefit of on-line, real-time monitors than it does for a community hospital to forgo vital sign monitoring equipment in favor of high-tech MRI and other diagnostic equipment. So I think.

Thanks for reading.

Grant

PS – If you are of age, and have not done so, please call your doctor today. Have a colonoscopy. More importantly, convince the ones you love to have theirs. With the cancer removed, I look forward to the opportunity for sharing a lot of sunsets that I would otherwise have viewed without anyone at my side.

As a public service, I am today writing to dispel some unfortunate rumors.

First, stand by while I tuck my tongue in my cheek. Meaning, I’ve being cynical here.

Federal and State Regulators do not routinely bring loaded firearms into meetings to “negotiate” consent agreements with municipal wastewater utilities. To think so is absurd. Let me explain…

Municipal wastewater administrators are very aware of federal budget problems and, like all red blooded Americans, wish to reduce deficit spending. In the spirit of governmental transparency and political bipartisanship, municipalities are happy to take on additional financial obligations.

Enlightened municipal officials – that includes treatment plant supervisors, staff, and all involved in wastewater treatment – actively pursue opportunities to spend tens of millions of dollars to, for example, reduce effluent phosphorus from 0.2 mg/L to 0.1 mg/L. The “consent agreement” format gives us a venue for doing so.

Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, the following series of facts have no relationship to one another.

Consent agreements typically require municipalities to hire engineers to design solutions to permit compliance issues. Design engineers usually receive 15-20% of total project costs. The vast majority of municipal wastewater treatment plants are custom designed. Project costs average in the millions, maybe tens of millions of dollars.

It is a total coincidence that the vast majority of non-municipal wastewater treatment facilities are pre-engineered, package plants, and that these treatment plants cost far less than custom built designs.

As promoted by the Water Environment Federation’s Water is Life and Infrastructure Makes it HappenTM campaign, equipment, not wastewater treatment plant staff, make the difference. You and I are less important to effective wastewater treatment than are equipment manufacturers, engineers, and regulatory personnel. It is they, not us, that “make it happen.” Go to the Water Environment Federation (your organization) web site to learn the “truth.”

Finally, and I’m removing tongue from cheek for this one, the 15,000 people best suited to decide what is best for the municipal wastewater treatment plants in this country are the superintendents of America’s 15,000 municipal wastewater treatment plants. You have the right – I say the obligation – to direct those of us who work for you.

As much as I’d like to convince you (and me) that I’m uniquely able to put your municipality’s needs above those of me and my company. Fact is, I do think I’m unique. But, really, not so… Don’t let the hired help tell you what is good for you when you know better than us. But do let us help you get there.

Thanks for reading.

Grant

I’m not much of a shopper. Last time I’ve been inside of a mall was maybe two years ago. I can’t remember. I do, however, regularly frequent Walmarts. And, Lowes. Love ‘em both.

I also go grocery shopping. Solo. No tag team shopping for me.

Last week, as I was negotiating my way through the produce section, I could not help but notice a fellow shopper. She was covered head to toe in black cloth with only a slit for her to see through. Yup, a burkha. With her was a boy of four or five years.

I was intrigued, but not very comfortable with the situation. Afterward, I talked about it with a few people. They confided that they wouldn’t feel all that comfortable being in a store with a burkha wearer either.

I’m fine with people who dress differently. Hasidic Jewish men stand out because of their traditional hair and clothing styles. Indian women wear colorful print shawls and often have a red spot on their foreheads. Amish not only dress differently, they travel by horse and buggy and live without electricity. Some men, for religious reasons, wear turbans. I don’t know about you, but people like this don’t blend in with others in my neighborhood.

These folks believe strongly enough in something to be different. I may not share their values, but they have a right to look and live and they wish. Some – the Amish, for example – impress me. I admire their courage, commitment, and resolve. So, good for them. Good for diversity.

If you are waiting for me to make a connection to wastewater treatment, I’m not going to. There is no connection. Not to wastewater. Not this time.

Nope, it is the DISconnection that concerns me. Not “concerns,” more than that. The burkha represents the enemy: a group of people who wish you and me dead. Far from all of them want me dead, I realize. But, more than a few do. Me, I don’t wish harm to anyone – well, not anyone that prevents me and mine from living our lives. But, I don’t want to be naïve either.

When you come across someone in your neighborhood wearing a burkha, it is hard to tell yourself that everything is hunky dory.

Here are some of the thoughts that went through my head when I pushed my grocery cart around the woman in her burkha.

Cool, I’m looking at my first burkha. I wonder why she is wearing that thing here? My, what a cute boy. Maybe I should chat her up. No, Grant, she is wearing the black wrap because she wants me to know that she does NOT want to talk to me. It may be against her religion for an unaccompanied man to talk to her. Doing so could, in her mind, be a sin. Fact is, Grant, she’d prefer you to be further away from her, not closer. So, move on.

The thinking then went something like this.

Hey, this Stop & Shop is what, one mile from a nuclear submarine base? Who is her man? Where is he? Is he friend or foe? Not likely a friend. Likely, best is neutral to my existence. At worst, yipes! I wonder what would happen if she walked into a bank with that thing on?

Aye-yi-yi.

More later.

Thanks for reading.

Grant

I attended a municipal sewer authority meeting this week. It wasn’t my first. Not by a long shot. A group of civic minded volunteers authorized the spending of nearly $10 million. As these things go, it is a small project. As board members go, this group is enthused and engaged. They are working hard at what they believe best for their community.

In an effort to secure a 25% grant and 2% loan, the municipality voted to hire lawyers at a cost of $465,000. And, engineering services totaling $1.8 million. The regional health district will receive $494,000 to monitor construction.

Not counting the health district’s “force account expenditures,” the professional services overhead makes up 22% of the total project cost. Spending 22% to save 25% seems like a pretty good deal, especially since some engineering and legal work needs to be done, regardless of the funding source, does it not?

No. Not really.

But, by no means is this the “fault” of the volunteers who sit on the sewer authority. They are doing what they are supposed to do: put their faith and trust in the government agencies that exist to serve them and rely upon the professional guidance that the professionals they employ give them.

Fact is, there is not so small hidden cost that nobody told them about: the inflated cost of compliance with federal and state Clean Water funding requirements. These costs cause project costs to skyrocket. Please read on…

We don’t partake of Clean Water funds. Our clients fund our work without big government money. You’d think it would cost them more. It should. But, since the system is broken, they realize huge savings. If we can’t deliver a project for a 75% savings, we take a pass. Yes, you read correctly. We get the job done for one-fourth the cost of traditional Clean Water funded projects, or not at all. Make no mistake, our designs are not “cheap.” We are very big on instrumentation; more so than most design engineers. To save clients money, we use pre-engineered, pre-fabricated components. Mostly, we save client money by reusing existing equipment differently.

And, we get the job done a LOT faster.

The municipality mentioned above has spent a decade getting their funding application approved. For the past ten years, the pollution that the project is supposed to remove has been ongoing. Now, ten years later, and at a considerably higher cost than going it without Uncle Sugar, the municipality is finally about to get a shovel in the ground.

If you need your toilet paper holders made of brass and curbing made of granite, feel free to stand in line for some Clean Water funds. If you want a treatment plant that does an outstanding job of making clean water, faster and less expensively, go without federal and state funds.

Better, give me a call. Let me show you what we can do.

Thanks for reading.

Grant

I’m an animal lover. Plants, too.

My children were raised in something of a zoo. In addition to dogs and cats, we had rabbits, ducks, chickens, guinea fowl and turkeys. We had millipedes, hissing cockroaches, salamanders and newts. We bottle fed an abandoned raccoon before returning him to the wild. Our collection of fish, sea monkeys, and turtles included a small snapper my daughter named “fluffy.” We had a chinchilla, a hedgehog and ferrets. Snakes, hamsters and guinea pigs. And, then there was that pair of nasty geckos that only my son would handle – with leather gloves.

Of the many dogs in my life, I most fondly remember Queenie and Zeb. Queenie, a Llewellyn Setter was a great childhood pet and an equally marvelous hunting dog, bobwhite quail being her specialty. Zeb was as devoted of a companion as anyone could ever want. Once, after getting into it with a porcupine, he trustfully looked into my eyes as I extracted dozens of barbed quills from his mouth. With pliers. His pain was unbelievable, his trust stronger. Something I’ll never forget.

As much as I like animals, members of my species are more important to me. Given the choice, I’ll sacrifice wildlife for human welfare. Any day. This puts me at odds with many in the environmental movement. It is where we part ways.

Take Switzerland, for example. Residents are no longer allowed to flush sick aquarium fish down the toilet. Unless, that is, they are first euthanized with a “sharp blow to the head, or immersed in water mixed with clove oil dissolved in alcohol.” The country’s animal lawyer, Antoine Goetschel, is suing a sports fisherman who landed a 22 pound pike for taking too long to reel in the fish: cruel behavior, or some such allegation.

This is relevant information.

Before we in the wastewater biz find ourselves on the wrong side of political correctness, we need to work on our terminology. We need to come up with a new way to refer to “wasting sludge.” Sludge, after all, is mostly bacteria – living creatures. Sounds pretty cruel to so casually discuss the death of so many little organisms, don’t you think? Before someone re-labels our work “genocide,” somebody needs to form a committee and give us a new name. Something like “bio-solids recycling.”

I’m suggesting we take the offensive because it will only be a matter of time before Attorney Goetschel and his ilk find out that wastewater professionals use chlorine to KILL filamentous bacteria. If word of this gets out, we’ll be required to establish pre-death chambers with soothing music and nice art work. Or, some such thing.

How about this for a pro-active idea: let’s form a committee to figure out how we perform the proper forensics on aquarium fish that get flushed. I’m thinking we can check them for head blows or traces of clove oil and alcohol. Little fishes that don’t show signs of either can then be delivered to the police for follow-up investigation. Call it our way of stopping animal cruelty.

Okay, I’m kidding. But really!

When, my friends, will the nonsense stop?

Thanks for reading.

Grant

Last week I sat quietly while a design engineer lectured a client about my company’s “bad science.” He became so rabid during the two hour rant, I offered to get him a soda. Not because I was in any way empathetic. The spittle on his lip was grossing me out. Sadly, he declined the offer of drink and I withstood a two-fronted assault: verbal and visual.

Charlatans exist. I just read about a fellow in Russia who claims to have invented a device that supposedly makes drinking water out of radioactive waste. In the spirit of creating jobs in the Soviet down economy, I suppose, United Russia, the nation’s ruling party, has invested millions of rubles in the former convict’s “inventions.”

A healthy skepticism is a good defensive mechanism. In my circumstance, the engineer was outraged at my ability to work with an intelligent client to make the treatment plant he designed produce an effluent three times cleaner than his mathematical model said possible: 1.2 mg/L total-nitrogen. Without chemicals, Suffield (CT) is producing better effluent with much of the engineer’s equipment disabled. Worst of all, I have shown the audacity to provide scientific explanations. An unmitigated outrage!

At the risk of getting dead fish snail-mailed my way, I’m using this forum to share one of the very theories that got my counterpart jacked up. Comments, as always, are welcome.

In Modified Ludzack-Ettinger (MLE) process designs, engineers provide pumping equipment to internally recycle 3 to 5 times the influent flow rate. Math drives the designs. By recycling 4Q, 80% of the nitrate produced during nitrification is returned to the anoxic tank for denitrification.

Notwithstanding the beauty of the mathematics, high recycle rates don’t improve nitrogen removal at the treatment plants where I hang. The opposite occurs: too much internal recycling reduces nitrate removal. This fact has perplexed many an engineer.

Most consultants, when confronted with this reality, ascribe it to the recycling of dissolved oxygen back into the anoxic tank, and a resulting increase in anoxic DO. I agree. But. I believe it to be more than that.

And, here’s where I got Rabid Engineer frothing. I believe that the recycle rate affects the hydraulic retention time in the pre-anoxic and aeration tanks. That, when the recycle rate is too high, bacteria spend too few consecutive minutes in anoxic conditions to denitrify.

Bacteria, as those of us in the wastewater biz know, are prolific little copulators. But even these little sexpots require some time to get in the mood: to court one another, enjoy a meal together, and then go about their reproductive business. If they aren’t kept in an anoxic environment long enough, the growth rate is affected and nitrate removal efficiency declines. On the other hand, slowing down the internal recycle rate gives them more time to cozy up to one another and go about their nitrate removing business.

Biology trumps mathematics! That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Thanks for reading.

Grant