Grant’s Blog

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