High Marks: The State-of-the-Waste Water Treatment Plant

2016 Waste Water Treatment Plant

Report Card

Categories	Grade
Influent Flow and Loading	C
Effluent Quality: BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand)	A
Effluent Quality: TSS (Total Suspended Solids)	A
Effluent Quality: Phosphorous	A
Biosolids Quality and Management	A
Staffing	A
Operator Certification and Education	A
Financial Management	A
Sanitary Sewer Collection Systems	A
GRADE POINT AVERAGE (GPA)	3.81

At June's City Council meeting, Chetek Waste Water Treatment Plant Operator Mike McGinnis gave his last annual “State-of-the-Treatment Plant” presentation and once again the plant gets fairly good grades. Every year the DNR requires waste water treatment plant operators to complete a Compliance Maintenance Annual Report (or CMAR) for the municipality it serves. It's a self-evaluation tool that helps the city stay on top of how well our plant is operating and assess what we have to do – if anything – to make it work better.

As the report shows, we received top marks in every category last year except “influent” (we received a “B” in that category in 2015). Before addressing that issue, let's make sure we know what we're talking about:

The "auger" at the front gate of the plant.
All the water comes in through here.

● “INFLUENT”: It means “what comes in” to the plant. On a normal day, depending on the weather, the plant processes approximately 385,000 gallons of dirty water. Heavy rains affect that monthly average. In 2016, in both June and July, we averaged between 500-550,000 gallons a day which is way beyond our plant's normal capacity contributing significantly to our low grade. But we've got a fix for that (more on that later.)

Inside the "igloo"

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

• BOD (or Biologial Oxygen Demand) is the most commonly used measurement of wastewater, 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). All wastewater usually contains large quantities of suspended solids that are both organic and inorganic in nature. These solids are measured as Total Suspended Solids (or TSS) and are also expressed in milligrams per liter of water. As with BOD, the lower your score the better off you are.
• Phosphorus is the “big ticket” item today that has everybody talking, especially in the Red Cedar River valley. The DNR wants to make sure that we're doing our best to remove as much phosphorous as possible 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 continue to meet acceptable State levels.

So why is it a perfect 4.0 report continue to elude us (we graded out an F in Influent in 2014 and a B in 2015)? Simple: on top of all the dirty water we're processing we're also treating hundreds of thousands of gallons of otherwise clean groundwater. Our pipes leak and way too much water that never needed to be treated to begin with is handled by our plant. On the up-side, a lot of this water is fairly diluted already but on the down-side, the deluge of water that comes in short-circuits the process by which our water is treated. In a perfect world, wastewater spends between 4 and 5 hours at the plant before it reenters the river but on certain days its pushed out way before then without getting what Mike likes to call its “final sun tan”, wherein the water is treated with ultraviolet rays, making whatever bacteria is left within it essentially sterile. We applied for a grant to help us re-line the offending sewer pipes as well as replace the Fine Screen at the plant and we're awarded it. It won't pay for everything but it sure is a nice hunk of what we'll end up owing. This work probably will happen this fall.

Mike trying to explain to the Mayor how the thing works

In the mean time, Our Man Mike will continue to man his post making sure our old plant keeps running as effectively as a 35-year-old facility can. At least until September when Mike plans on retiring. Talk about the end of an era. We are all grateful for his ongoing oversight of one of the most vital operations within our community.