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.

A short primer on Barron County "garbology"

“Americans make more trash than anyone else on the planet, throwing away about 7.1 pounds per person per day, 365 days a year. Across a lifetime that rate means, on average, we are each on track to generate 102 tons of trash. Each of our bodies may occupy only one cemetery plot when we’re done with this world, but a single person’s 102-ton trash legacy will require the equivalent of 1,100 graves. Much of that refuse will outlast any grave marker, pharaoh’s pyramid or modern skyscraper: One of the few relics of our civilization guaranteed to be recognizable twenty thousand years from now is the potato chip bag.” 
― Edward Humes, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash

Thanks, girls, for thinking larger than your playground

Right before school let out for the summer, I received a small delegation of third graders at City Hall. Of their own accord they had collected 169 signatures, mostly of their classmates, affixed to a petition for curb-side recycling in our city. Their main concern is while Chetek has two places where recyclable material can be dropped off (across from the dam and behind Atrium Post-Acute Care [formerly Knapp Haven]) what about those who no longer drive or will not take the time to stop off at one of the drop-off boxes? In their words:

We want to have recycling bins outside our houses in the community of Chetek. We want this because if you don't recycle the world will be destroyed. Only some people can or will drive to the recycling center. So please help us make the City of Chetek a better place.

Before you offer up an obligatory, “Aw, shucks. That's sweet,” for these girls' efforts, let me assure you they mean business. Kids though they may be, they want to make sure everyone in Chetek is recycling. So, I figured the least I could do was put in a call to the Barron County Incinerator and find out if there are any better options out there than what we're already doing. That led to a conversation with Al Zeltner, a Chetek guy who a lot of us know already who, unbeknownst to me, has been the Waste-to-Energy Facility plant manager nearly from its beginning in 1986. 

He suggested I drive out to Almena sometime soon so he could give me the grand tour and right before the end of June I did just that. And for the next three hours I got an education in Barron County “garbology.”

Ever wonder where all our trash goes? By county ordinance everybody's garbage in Barron County, save both the city and township of Rice Lake, comes to Al and the crew out there. The Waste-to-Energy Facility has, essentially, two “different” components to its plant – the incinerator side of the facility and the recyclables.

Let's talk garbage first as in Garbage-In. In layman's terms, it basically works like this:

Pick up day is Tuesday
in our neighborhood

• The Martin's put out their two garbage cans at the end of our driveway on Banks Street on Monday night in preparation for Tuesday afternoon pick-up. Good recycling people that we are, our plastic and glass items have already been removed to their separate “bins” (which in our case are individual plastic bags). Sometime Tuesday afternoon, “Tank” Davis and Aaron Robert – the city's garbage guys - swing by our house and empty our receptacles (which, by the way, by city ordinance our garbage is supposed to be set in) into the back end of the garbage truck. By the end of the route they head on down the road to Almena to drop off their load there (these guys make that trip four times a week there and back again every week of the year).

•  They drop it off into a large holding area which Al affectionately refers to as “Mount Trashmore”. The day I was there Al estimated that we were looking at three days' worth of county trash. From the

One side of "Mount Trashmore"

vantage point of the large windows of the control room that look out over the pile, the good news is that overall Al could assure me – and I, in turn, can assure the girls - that the majority of Barron County citizens are indeed recycling.

And now the sorting starts

Nevertheless, now that the trash is at the plant they need to now “sort” it which involves a guy in a front loader dragging out a pile of garbage from the mound and then he and another comrade essentially pulling out stuff that should not go into the fires of Gehenna (on the day I was there I saw a small mound of old chairs that looked like they had come from a school somewhere as well as a pile of assorted tin odds & ends that were being pulled aside to be moved over to the recycling part of the plant.)

It's a job that requires a lot of hand's on work

Off to a separate recycling bin

The boss looking out over Mount Trashmore

•  After the trash has been sorted, it is then pushed by the front loader into a bay of sorts and when ready, the bottom opens up and the trash falls into one of the two incinerators and begins its burn.

Garbage-in

Garbage-down

This is how the magic works

There be a whale of garbage in thar

Don't try this at home

While there is a whole science to this process the long and short of it is the Martins' garbage on Fifth Street, along with everybody else's trash on our route, is burned entirely. But then this is where the “magic” happens. That energy doesn't just go out a stack somewhere (God forbid!) No, it's transformed into electricity 

All that steam turns garbage into electricity

the bulk of which travels right across the road to the Saputo cheese plant on Highway P. Think of that: what was once an egg carton, plastic wrapper and a cereal box through the power of steam combustion gets transmuted into electrons and protons that runs the machines turning curds and whey into cheese. It's almost the stuff of Star Trek replicators!

From the transformer to here...

...to here (right across the road)

This stuff is heading to the landfill in Sarona

And what about the ash left over? Well they've thought of everything. After the burn the remaining ash is moved into a holding area of sorts which will later be transported to the landfill outside of Sarona. According to the literature Al handed me, this ash is “safer and takes up one tenth of the space required by the original waste” and essentially their responsibility to handle appropriately and not ours.

And all those stray batteries that make into the incinerator or the plethora of aerosol cans and other metals? Those get sorted out as well and land in a separate bay eventually making their way to a firm in Eau Claire that recycles these items.

Metals that were missed before the burn

Lots and lots of batteries can be found in this pile

"What is that?" That is someone's old tape measure

I'm sure I've oversimplified the process but essentially "Mount Trashmore" is a geographic entity of sifting garbage that gets made and remade every day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for the benefit of us all.

Now let's talk recyclables as in Garbage-Out.

The Barron County Waste-to-Energy Facility is where all our recyclables go to get sorted and sent out to various plants for their conversion into something good. Just like our trash, there is a trail to follow and it goes something like this:

•  The Martins collect their glass and plastic containers and when

Linda prefers the one by the dam

the bags are full we make our way to one of the two sites of drop-off boxes in town. If it's my wife, she likes the ones down by the dam. If it's me, I prefer the one behind Pelican Place. But either way, our recyclable garbage makes it way to one of these sites.

You can thank Al that there are two extra ones for the summer months

Please follow instructions

On most weeks, the boxes are traded out on Mondays and Fridays, empty ones being dropped off and the full ones getting transported to Almena.

•  Once there these boxes are sorted out as well – plastic going one way, glass going another, and tin going yet another way – and all of it by hand.

What's he up to? Taking all the caps off the soda and water bottles that come his way.
And are there A LOT of them!

Do you know your numbers? I didn't either

Plastics: There are all kinds of plastics but for the most part the stuff they're dealing with there are Plastic #1 (PETE or PET – Polyethylene Terephthalate) which is the stuff they make soda and water bottles out of as well as salad dressing and peanut butter containers or Plastic #2 (HDPE – High Density Polyethylene) which are the kind of bottles and jugs that our milk, laundry detergent and shampoo comes in.

A tall stack of laundry detergent jugs

A tall stack of milk jugs

Glass: Meanwhile the glass gets sorted out according to color – brown or amber (beer) goes in one bin, clear (your lite beers and pop) in another and colored (your blues, greens and the like that are frequently used for wine) in yet another. According to Al, it's this third bin that there's the least demand for as well as the least value.

Amber/brown glass

white/clear glass

Not all glass is equal.
This is white glass.

Looks like white glass but it isn't
(it's the bottom edge that gives it away!)

Tin: Your typical soup or soda pop can is 100 per cent recyclable. As in, all of it. And they can be recycled an infinite number of times (unlike paper which has less and less fiber the more it is recycled). Like everything else at the plant, it gets sorted and shipped out eventually finding its way back to you within a few months time as a new can of soup or pop. Amazing.

• All these items are separated, crushed, stacked and then sent off to places to get transformed. According to some of the on-line web-sites I visited, Plastic #1 items is recycled into tote bags, furniture, carpet, paneling, fiber and polar fleece. Meanwhile Plastic #2 jugs and bottles are turned into pens, recycling containers, picnic tables, benches, fencing and detergent bottles, to name a few. Meanwhile all your glass items go somewhere to be reduced to a substance they call “cullet” and then, depending on color and quality made into a new glass bottle or various fiberglass products.

Where old refrigerators go to die

And what of all the other stuff that we accumulate and need to get rid of? Things like old appliances, television sets, microwaves, office computers, tires, carpets and the like? Ah, there are homes for all these items. Tires get burned (“it's a wonderful carbon-based product” says Al), refridgerators get emptied of their freon and eventually crushed, T.V.s go someplace (Warning from Al: Resist the temptation to kick in your old TV screen. It's probably on more than a few people's bucket-list but the reality is once you kick it in it is officially hazardous waste and the Waste-to-Energy Facility cannot receive it. Sorry to all the Chuck Norris wanna-bes out there), old carpets go to Madison and on it goes.

You're heard of Best Buy? This ain't it

Someone one went Chuck Norris on their old TV

Not hazardous waste if intact

All are burned in the incinerator in an eco-friendly way

Soon off to Madison

Something like this

When I was a kid, during the summer months I spent several long weekends with my grandparents who had a cabin in northeastern Wisconsin. One of the fun things to do back then was to “go to the dump” on a Saturday night and wait for the bears to come in. Although I may be imagining this but in my memory it seems that there was always a fire smoldering at the dump rife with old junk and refuse. Those days are long gone. While I'm sure there are still farmers around throwing their unwanted odds and ends into a hole in a back lot of theirs, for the most part the garbage industry is now heavily regulated and controlled. And I'm sure we all agree that's a good thing.

So, girls, recycling is happening in Barron County and a lot of it. According to Al, it's still far cheaper for Chetek to use drop boxes than to go to a curb-side recycling program. But you do raise a good question: “What about those people that can't get to a drop-off site – especially the elderly and those who don't drive? Can we ensure that they get access to the two sites in town?” I don't have an answer to that question yet. We're going to have to keep working the problem because garbage happens and it's in everybody's interest to make sure we pick up after ourselves the best we can.

Thanks, Al, for the tour and the education (anything I got wrong in this blog post
is entirely my fault!)

A few other fun and interesting facts about the Waste-to-Energy Facility and recycling in general:

• Currently 35,000 tons (100 tons per day) of waste is converted into steam energy each year.

• Since adding the condensing steam turbine generator in 2010, Barron County's waste has been converted into 4.7 billion pounds of steam.

• That steam would heat more than 1,400 homes or a community roughly the size of Cumberland, Chetek or Barron.

• The facility removes and recycles 1600 tons of various metals and e-waste each year.

• Each year 1000 appliances and numerous batteries and ballasts are recycled.

• Since 2011 over 350 tons (30 tractor/trailer loads) of Electronic Waste “E Waste” has been recycled.

Remember: CAPS off (they're only good for burning)

• According to the brochure that is available at both drop-off box sites and at City Hall, before you put your used water bottle into the bin you should remove the cap. Why? Well, apparently the plastic that the caps are made of are different than what the water bottles are made of. The caps are burned and the bottles are recycled. The day I was at the plant, there was a guy who all he was doing was ripping off as fast as he could the caps on all the soda and water bottles that were moving down the conveyor belt. I apologized for adding to his work-load (because I always replace the cap on any water bottle I finish). “Don't worry about it. You're in good company.” All this to say: REMOVE YOUR CAP AND RING FROM THE TOP OF YOUR WATER OR POP BOTTLE WHEN YOU ARE THROUGH. At the very least it will make Trevors' job a little easier.

The Barron County Waste-to-Energy Facility is located three miles south of Almena right off Highway P and across the road from Saputo Cheese. 

They are open to the public from 3 - 8 p.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m.-8 p.m. on weekends and holidays.

For more information call (715) 357-6566 and next time you're at one of the drop-off boxes site why not pick up one of their brochures? It is very user-friendly and informative.