Grant’s Blog

My company recently mailed a series of postcards and company brochure promoting non-capital approaches to nutrient removal. We sent them to municipal wastewater administrators.

After receiving the mailings, a municipal supervisor left me the following voice mail:

“I received your flier. Very nice. We’ve already done about everything we can, given what we have. If you want to come up and see what we’ve done, fine. I don’t want you to waste money sending out a whole bunch of fliers to people.

Besides, we are undergoing a design for new denitrification facilities. If you want to hear about that, give me a call.”

During the extensive tour I learned that the “new denitrification facilities” are, in fact, a complete makeover of the facility. The 8 MGD wastewater treatment plant is currently removing ammonia but not removing nitrate. Only one-half of the aeration tanks and two of the four final clarifiers are in service.

I suggested an operational strategy for improving nitrogen removal. Two, actually. The superintendent agreed that the ideas would likely work and would, in a few month’s time, result in lower effluent nitrogen.

I was then escorted to my car.

You see, the municipality is in line to receive $50 million for a facility upgrade under the guise of nitrogen removal. The $50 million project will buy new office furniture, provide for a new air conditioning system, and get the offices painted. It will modify a meter pit so that the one-hour calibrations performed every four months don’t tie up two employees with confined space entry procedures. Big ticket items? The two surplus final clarifiers – both structurally sound – are to be demolished and replaced with a new one.

For delivering these “environmental improvements,” the municipality’s consultant will take in seven million dollars.

In a previous installment, I wrote about another superintendent. One of the many who share my belief that success is found by saving ratepayer/taxpayer money; not by spending it. I like his story better…

Thanks for reading.

Grant

Wastewater superintendents operate and maintain facilities. Engineers design modifications. This is as it should be. Or…?

When permit conditions change, most municipalities employ an engineer to prepare a Facility Plan to identify new equipment requirements. Doing so assumes – incorrectly in many cases – that the existing equipment is inadequate.

Typically, the plant Superintendent waits to hear back from the engineer. Few Superintendents are comfortable with asserting themselves. Few Superintendents are in a position of having the engineer work for them.  

This is a story about a Superintendent who believed it was his job to first see how he could modify operations before new equipment was installed. It is a story about a fellow I enticed to leave his Class I operator job 8½ years ago to work for me. Someone who attained his ABC Class IV license, left on excellent terms, and is now working for a competitor.

It’s a story about a knowledgeable, confident, effective Superintendent who brought a municipal wastewater treatment facility into full permit compliance before work began on the $15 million project that was designed to provide the very same water quality improvements he attained for a cost of less than $50,000.

Here’s what he did.

He reduced effluent nitrogen by half. Now, instead of buying nitrogen credits to comply with State requirements – as the facility had been required to do in previous years, the municipality receives rebates for exceeding nitrogen removal requirements. Effluent TSS and BOD, often out of compliance during peak flows, now routinely meet all permit conditions. Electrical consumption is down.

The improvements were made by understanding and managing nitrogen removal processes, which in turn improved settleability and provided new opportunities for TSS and BOD removal. The aeration equipment is cycled to run 4 hours on and 2 hours off. When flows surge during heavy rains, mixed liquor is “parked” in the clarifiers and aeration tanks: aeration equipment is turned off and RAS flows are kept at a minimum.

Here’s why he did it: he cares. He cares enough to forgo some new toys in order to save his municipality millions and millions of dollars.

Most municipal wastewater Superintendents, given the opportunity to do so, can significantly reduce the cost of making their facilities more effective. Let’s ask them to. Better, let’s expect them to.

Thanks for reading.

            Grant

There are so many hidden costs associated with Clean Water funding that it almost always costs municipalities more to use the money than going it alone with 100% local funding.

Disagree? Please state your case by adding a comment.

Once upon a time, construction grant funding was irresistible: 90% grant and 10% loan. Today, the best that most communities can hope for is a 20% grant and a 2% loan. And this after many years of waiting in line. Given that the submittal, review, and approval process escalates costs by 25-50% (my estimate); municipalities end up paying money for the opportunity to obtain Clean Water funds. Millions more.

Why do municipalities continue to invest years of time and millions of dollars in the pursuit of Clean Water funding?

Municipalities apply for Clean Water funding because…

Because Change is difficult; it’s the way things have been done for decades.

Because State and Federal Regulators like using the program as an enforcement tool. (You know the drill: apply for Clean Water funding and we’ll put you on an enforcement schedule that is conditional upon funding.)

Because Consultants have a big financial stake in the program. Even the smallest of jobs provides million dollar “engineering” fees for nonsensical planning, study and design report efforts.

Because the Mayor and other Local Officials get good press when they score State and Federal funds.

Because the program provides Environmentalists with a tangible mission: to lobby for ever more Federal money.  

Because State and Federal legislators who vote to spend taxpayer money to fund Clean Water programs get credit for doing good things for the environment.

Because, after years of anticipation, treatment plant Superintendents get a bunch of new equipment; some needed, some not.

Seems that spending Clean Water funds makes sense for everybody. Everybody except for the Taxpayer and the Ratepayer, that is. Oh, the environment too. Instead of letting things decline to the point where a “plant upgrade” is needed, it is better to keep equipment up-to-date. To make modifications when and as necessary.

Those of you who have, please share your success stories. Doing so may encourage others.

Thanks for reading.

This is a story about a federal program that effectively accomplished what it set out to do. The Clean Water Fund, once called the Construction Grants Program, has financed the construction of over 10,000 municipal wastewater treatment facilities. As a result, our nation’s waterways are a lot cleaner.

Grant’s version. In the early 1970s, Congress established EPA. Soon after, the Clean Water Act  provided EPA funding for cities to build much needed wastewater treatment plants.

This happened while I was “finding myself” in various colleges in the Midwest. But, I digress…

Prior to the 1970s, very few municipalities were effectively treating wastewater. Raw or inadequately treated sewage was discharged into rivers for the downstream neighbors to deal with. Appropriately, effectively, the federal government came up with a fix.

By the late 1980s most communities had built modern wastewater treatment facilities and most cities were treating wastewater to “secondary treatment” standards of 30 mg/L BOD and 30 mg/l TSS*. Waterways were getting healthier, but for big cities located on small waterways, secondary treatment wasn’t enough. New technologies were required. Clean Water Funds provided scientists and engineers with the resources to develop better ways of treatment. By 1990, functioning treatment plants were producing clean water in nearly every American city.

This is where things get complicated.

Treatment requirements continue to ramp up, as they should. Clean Water Funds are made available to help communities meet more treatment standards, but in reality the vast majority of the money is spent to renovate existing municipal treatment plants.

Why? To obtain funds, a huge financial commitment to unnecessary studies must often be made. Even when an existing treatment facility is meeting all permit conditions, money to upgrade worn equipment is not available unless millions are spent on studies and designs that consider the needs of the next twenty years. 

Given the rules that a municipality must play by in order to get State and Federal funds, it is almost always cheaper to go it alone. Yet, few communities do. Why? Stayed tuned.

Thanks for reading.

Grant

*Note: For help with technical terms, please visit our Wastewater Science web page.