One of country singer Sara Evan’s hits is the song “Perfect.” During the course of the song, she tells the man she loves… “every little piece of the puzzle doesn’t always fit perfectly…”
Imagine. The woman of your dreams declaring that she is more than okay with your imperfections: count me in! Actually, I am in. Better. My woman has given me “celebrity dispensation” to canoodle Sara Evans in the event I ever have the opportunity. In return, I’ve given “celebrity dispensation” for a few of the professional wrestlers on the WWE circuit. So we pretend.
Sara Evans open-mindedness notwithstanding, there is a dangerous demand for perfection in our society. Including wastewater design. Millions and millions of US dollars are spent building treatment plants so they are equipped to take on any number of improbable conditions.
Over the objections of my lawyer wife, I’m going to let everyone in on a secret: we, at the Water Planet company are imperfect. Our designs are similarly imperfect. It’s the way we roll.
And then some.
When we work with treatment plant personnel, we don’t pretend to offer perfect solutions. We find effective, practical ways of getting the job done. Because we accept mistakes as a way of optimization, we are flexible, we modify, and we improve on our designs as they are installed. In other words, we clean up after ourselves.
Our approach – we think – provides clients with a better product. We get things done with huge environmental and fiscal savings. Environmental savings are realized because less needless stuff is built and operated. Ditto for the monetary savings. We find it a more rewarding experience for the treatment plant staff too because we work together.
Right now we are working on a number of projects. After I clear everything with the appropriate municipalities, I can provide details. For now, let me summarize what we are doing to improve nutrient removal at three treatment plants.
At one we are cycling the mechanical aerators on and off to provide alternating ammonia-removal and nitrate-removal; the latest total-N was 5.5 mg/L. Not bad for a 1970s vintage treatment plant with no intention of ever being used for ammonia removal, let alone total-N removal. Capital cost: $0.
At another we have shut off one of the 75 HP blowers and cut the internal recycle rate to one-fourth of what it was. The carbon footprint has been slashed by reducing electrical consumption (the dollar savings are outrageous) and effluent total-N is down 50%. The cost of improvements? $4,000 for SCADA programming.
At plant number three – the most archaic of them all – we are using the gravity thickener to denitrify. Although the plant was (until we got involved) scheduled to be mothballed, effluent nitrogen is now around 5 mg/L. Total cost of improvements: Zero.
In none of these cases did we provide clients with perfect solutions. Good solutions, for sure, but not perfect. At each of these plants there is more we can do to make things better. As resources become available, I’m confident we will. In fact, for one of the above, we are closing a deal to oversee a complete overhaul of the existing treatment plant at a $40 million savings over the construction of an all-new “perfect” treatment plant.
Thanks for reading.
Grant