All "A"s and a "B": The Annual Report Card for the Wastewater Treatment Plant

At July's council meeting, Mike McGinnis, plant operator of Chetek's Waste Water Treatment facility, gave his annual “State of the Wastewater Treatment Plant” report. Every year, Mike makes his appearance before the council to share our plant's report card. Unlike a State of the State speech or State of the Union speech, however, this presentation is a pretty pedestrian affair – no balloons, no raucous shouting, no red-white-and-blue bunting (although we did have a couple of dozen Spudniks from Bob's Grill on hand for those who chose to attend) – but for those of us who live in town, the news is overall good.

Ah, no...it really wasn't like this at all

Every year, the DNR requires plant operators of municipalities to submit a Compliance Maintenance Report that grades a wastewater treatment facility on matters such as influent flow and loadings (i.e., what comes in), effluent quality (i.e., what goes out), staffing, financial management and the like. There is always a year “drag” time (we'll hear the 2016 report next summer) but comparing 2014's results with 2015's there is significant improvement.

Comparatively speaking, here are our grades for the last two years:

CATEGORIES	Grade 2014	Grade 2015
Influent Fow and Loadings	F	B
Effluent Quality: BOD	A	A
Effluent Quality: TSS	A	A
Effluent Quality: Phosphorus	A	A
Biosolids Quality and Management	A	A
Staffing	A	A
Operator Certification	A	A
Financial Management	A	A
Collection Systems	A	A
GPA	3.62	3.91

Anytime a student can make that kind of improvement in a year's time, that's something to crow about. So, I had the same question that maybe many of you had: How did we go from an “F” to a “B” in “influent” and why did we score so badly in 2014?

Before I give you Mike's answer to that, it might be helpful to clarify what the first four categories mean.

The main gate - where "it" all comes in

As already mentioned, “influent” essentially means “what comes in” to the plant. On a “normal” day, depending on the weather, depending on where you are located in town if you flush your toilet at 12 noon by 5 p.m. that water has been processed and reintroduced to the Chetek River. During a downpour or during certain times (like, say, late morning when the 6-7 a.m. “rush” finally gets to the plant) there is a spike in influent but we have another significant factor that is causing us issues. More on that later.

Mike's lab where he does all his "cooking"

“Effluent Quality” (or what goes out into the Chetek River) is broken down into three different categories:

• 

  I grabbed this off the net but this is one facility's
  BOD samples

  BOD (or Biologial Oxygen Demand) is a figure usually expressed in milligrams that essentially shows how much dissolved oxygen is needed by the “critters” in the RBC units (i.e., the proverbial “slime on the rocks”) to break down the organic material in the water. It's a little more involved than that but it's sorta like golf – the lower your score, the better job your plant is doing.
• TSS (or Total Suspended Solids) is another way to gauge the quality of the water being reintroduced to the Chetek River. Just like the BOD results, this involves taking samples and tabulating the results.
• Phosphorus is the “big ticket” item today that has everybody talking, especially in the Red Cedar River watershed. The DNR wants to make sure that we're doing our best to remove as much phosphorous as practical from the water before it reenters the Chetek River. Given just how much of the stuff is “out there” in the Chain, to say nothing of the surrounding land, that's a pretty tall order. But as Mike's report clearly shows, we're meeting acceptable State levels at the present time.

So, why the “F” in 2014? Well, we had a couple incidents where the water was coming into the plant at such a rate that it was overflowing the banks of either the Final Clarifier or where the RBC units (the Rotating Biological Contractors) do their thing (see photo). In other words, too much water that had not been completely treated was making its way to the river on those occasions. Any time that happens, Mike is obligated to file a report with the DNR as well as demonstrate to them what we will do if such a circumstance happens again. Handyman that he is, Mike has jury-rigged a bunch of sump-pumps that should the need arise (and it has since) pushes the overflow back into the Primary Clarifier to go through the cycle again.

The areas in red are where we had overflow

That hose is part of our back-up

As Mike puts it, generally speaking “dilution is the solution to the pollution” but in our case, it's a double-edged sword. While its true that all the clean ground-water that continues to pour into our system because of leaky sewer pipes significantly dilutes the amount of dirty water we're processing it's putting an exorbitant strain on the system. In a perfect world, if your city's water tower is pumping out approximately 250,000 gallons of water, your treatment plant should be processing about the same amount. But in our case, on certain days the plant is processing twice that amount. If you read Carl Cooley's article in last week's Alert then you read this: “Most of this groundwater is fairly clear, so the plant is treating relatively clean water. Ideally, wastewater spends four to five hours in the plant, but now was getting pushed out in two hours, due to the overload” (Chetek Alert, July 20, 2016). Things can't go on like this forever which is why we applied for a grant back in May to help us re-line the offending sewer pipes and get some upgrades needed at the plant. If we get the green-light, help should come sometime next year. That won't fix everything but it will give us more time to determine what is the best future outcome for dealing with all our wastewater that we will continue to process.

This is the fix we're after

I don't know if it's the same system but this is the principle of the thing

Something like that

As Mike is fond of telling anybody who asks him, “She's not the prettiest girl out on the dance floor but she still gets the job done.” From our most recent report card it's clear that she is doing just that but I think we also need to acknowledge the man who continues to help that ol' gal deal with all our dirty business. Thank you, Mike, for keeping the water flowing and getting the most mileage out of our aging facility. We're all glad she can still get her groove on to that Frankie Yankovic polka beat.