One 5-mile section of 6-inch force main serving many restaurants delivers hydrogen sulfide and mercaptan odors to the station. Waste from a bakery on a 3-mile section of 8-inch force main produces sweet alcohol. The odor was so complicated that Thomas called in experts to treat it.

“We tried everything they recommended, from hydrogen peroxide and chlorine to aerating and a misting system,” he says. “Nothing cured the problem. We realized we would have to step up to something more costly and complex.”

Thomas invited makers of odor-control units to conduct tests. “We wanted to avoid continued chemical costs and high maintenance.” Thomas visited pilot installations of the Mónashell biofiltration system from Anua. Maintenance involved adding a little water to the unit and replacing the media as required. The system eliminated odors.

Modular system

Each biofilter is custom-built based on the quantity of air and quality of influent. The Mars Hill unit is 8.5 feet square and weighs 20,000 pounds with the shells. Workers poured a concrete pad to prepare for its arrival. “We also needed piping and a water source,” says Thomas. “Everything else is pre-engineered.”

The skid-mounted modular system has a bolted fiberglass-reinforced paneled housing and shell media, control panel, two fiber-reinforced plastic irrigation sumps, two 0.4 hp water recirculation pumps, and a 1 hp V-belt fan with unit-to-fan ductwork and vertical exhaust stack. The blower moves air at 465 cfm.

When activated, the unit pulls in air from the lift station. An internal air deflector box directs the flow up to the distribution zone. The vacuum created by the fan in the outlet box draws the waste airstream through the shells, a byproduct from the seafood industry. High levels of calcium carbonate in the shells neutralize acid byproducts of sulfide oxidation, while the large surface area promotes vigorous biological activity without chemicals or carbon.

As air passes through the media, water captures odorous compounds. Then the microorganisms on the shells and in the water oxidize them. Clean air leaves through the stack on the fan outlet.

“We top off the sumps at the bottom of the unit with a continual trickle of water, about 5 gpd,” says Thomas. “It’s enough to replace evaporation losses and to refresh the recirculating water.”

Spray heads recirculate the water onto the media. As the water drains down, it makes contact with the incoming odorous air. The water collects in the base of the unit, then drains back into the sump for recirculation to the irrigation grid.

Breath of fresh air

After bringing the biofilter on-line, the staff noticed a sharp decrease in hydrogen sulfide odor the next day. Each morning brought more improvement until the area was completely odorless. Earlier testing by Black & Veatch verified that the biofiltration system attains a neutral pH, removing more than 99 percent hydrogen sulfide, 98 percent ammonia, and more than 95 percent sulfur compounds.

Workers check the lift stations every other day and clean a small screen on the biofilter weekly. They also read the airflow gauge and initially ran pH and simple lab tests to check the health of the system. “The frequency of the tests dropped as we established a baseline that determined how often we needed to do them,” says Thomas. “The first four months we watched for changes.”

The unit has an alarm for low flows or low water levels, but it is not tied to an autodialer or SCADA system. Thomas believed that was unnecessary, as the crew is always checking the stations.

“We did see a 5 to 8 percent increase in power consumption over last year’s figures,” he says. “However, the biofilter took away a major headache and stopped the complaint calls. It’s a sustainable, cost-effective solution to achieving odor-free air.”

Extensively renovated starting in 1993, the building houses entertainment and events in the Fountain Square Theatre, art galleries and studios, two restaurants, seasonal rooftop dining, a cocktail bar, and duckpin bowling in either of two vintage alleys.

Duckpin bowling was born in Baltimore in 1900 and was a favorite of Babe Ruth. It uses smaller balls and pins and has different rules. The Action Duckpin Bowl has been restored with authentic 1930s vintage bowling equipment and eight lanes. A café area seats up to 120 guests, and surrounding windows give a great view of downtown.

The Atomic Bowl Duckpin, in the building’s basement, has seven lanes with authentic 1950s and 1960s bowling equipment, along with displays of mid-century bowling collectibles. A café seats up to 90 guests. Visit www.fountainsquareindy.com.

Bar and lounge

The ball & biscuit, two minutes from downtown at 331 Massachusetts Ave., is a bar and lounge set in the cultural corridor of the Mass Ave neighborhood. True to its eclectic surroundings, it has the laid-back atmosphere of a Prohibition-era speakeasy.

From the 150-year-old quarter-sawn wood floor, to the distressed leather chairs, the exposed brick walls and the tin ceiling, the place is a neighborhood bar at heart. The menu includes craft beers, boutique wines and unique cocktails that range from pre-Prohibition classics to modern concoctions. Unique bar foods are served in an atmosphere of background music conducive to good conversation. Visit www.balland biscuit.com.

Casual dining

Black Market is a new gastro pub at 922 Massachusetts Ave., four minutes from the Convention Center. It serves up “comfort food” with an Indiana flavor along with local beers and wines. Foods made with old-fashioned pickling and preservation methods often appear in the restaurant’s dishes. Entrees like ale steamed mussels, rainbow trout, mushroom dumplings and the Black Market burger are served in a casual atmosphere where diners in a suit or jeans are equally welcome. Entree prices range from $12 to $22. Visit www.blackmarket indy.net.

Historic site

Dominating the five-block picturesque setting of War Memorial Plaza in downtown Indianapolis, the Indiana World War Memorial sits 210 feet above street level. This mausoleum-style limestone and marble memorial honors Hoosiers killed during World Wars I and II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

The memorial, at 431 N. Meridian St., includes multiple standing figures that symbolize courage, memory, peace, victory, liberty and patriotism. The Shrine Room, with 24 stained glass windows, provides the setting for a 17- by 30-foot American flag suspended from the ceiling. A military museum in the basement follows the history of Indiana soldiers from the Battle of Tippecanoe through the most recent conflicts. Visit www.in.gov/iwm.

Shopping

Midland Arts & Antiques Market in downtown Indy can keep you occupied for hours with four floors full of art and antiques from more than 200 dealers from around the Midwest. Located at 907 E. Michigan St., four minutes from the Convention Center, the market has been a destination for more than 15 years. Merchandise includes decorative items, works by local artists, furniture, pottery, vintage jewelry, 1950s collectibles, china and a great deal more. Visit www.midlandathome.com.

Like it is the other 51 weeks of the year, social media is a source of news and information during the Expo. But, during Expo week when so much is happening in one place at one time, social media can be even more crucial to your business communications. While attending the Expo, Feb. 27-March 1 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, you can use social media both to keep track of what is happening at the show and to share information with others at the show and back home.

Social media at the Expo

If you are on Twitter, search for comments about the Expo using hashtags and also use them in your own tweets so other people interested in the show can find them. The hashtag symbol (#) used before relevant keywords in a tweet categorizes the tweet to show more easily in Twitter search. Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other tweets in that category.

Similarly on Facebook and LinkedIn, you can announce your company’s attendance at the Expo as well as any related news and events. You’ll also want to keep an eye on Facebook to see what’s being posted at www.facebook.com/MSWmag and www.facebook.com/pumpershow, and share thoughts and impressions about the show.

COLE Publishing, which creates this magazine and organizes the Expo, will have a mobile site for attendees to use at the event. The site will feature a searchable list of exhibitors and booths, a general schedule, and a more detailed educational schedule. Check out the mobile site at http://m.pumpershow.com.

One thing you don’t want to do is waste time at the Expo, so make sure your team has Internet-ready smartphones or tablets set up with the right applications for social media use. Be sure to bring chargers to power up devices at night and have a large enough memory card if you are going to take a lot of pictures or video.

In general, using social media at a trade show is easiest on a mobile device. A laptop computer can be inconvenient and cumbersome to carry around on the floor, but handy when you want to download photos off your phone at the end of the day.

While at the Expo, you can send out real-time updates of what’s going on all around you using Facebook or Twitter. You can also use YouTube to stream videos and Flickr to upload photos.

Another use for technology on the Expo floor could guarantee you get the “show discount” on a purchase. Suppose you see a product you like, but need authorization to buy it. Now you don’t have to wait to discuss it after you get home. Simply snap some photos and email them to the boss. If he or she doesn’t understand how the item works, make a video of the sales representative demonstrating it.

I spy … QR codes

While walking around the Expo, you may see QR codes on printed materials in some exhibitors’ booths. QR stands for “Quick Response” and refers to those black and white squares that are really a two-dimensional barcode readable by a variety of devices including smartphones.

The amount of information that can be contained in a QR code is about 4,300 characters. That’s enough for a business professional to include contact information and some personal background or product information, which is more than will fit on a standard business card.

Newer smartphones come with QR code readers installed. If your phone doesn’t have one installed, try Google Goggles or on an iPhone, the App Store to download a free reader.

Once you have the QR code reader installed, simply activate the application and take a quick snapshot of the data label with your camera.

If you’d like to use a QR code on your own company materials, the technology for creating them is usually free. There are also dozens of Web services that will create them for you.

There are plenty of places a QR code can be used, especially at a trade show. Try putting a code that contains all your contact information on your business card and then attach it to your show badge so people you meet can simply scan your card. If you want to be more memorable, have the QR code put on a baseball cap and ask people to scan you!

You can also put a QR code on flyers, brochures and other print collateral. That way, people have the option of scanning or taking these items with them. Those who are more technology oriented will appreciate you lightening their load. You may find after the show you’ve distributed fewer business cards, but made more contacts. And having your contact information scanned to someone’s phone makes it much less likely to get lost.

The party isn’t over

When the show is over and you’re back at the office, don’t assume your Expo social media efforts are over. Follow up with the leads you generated by connecting with them on LinkedIn or sending follow-up notes via email. Upload more media and recap the event for those who couldn’t make it this year.

And then … begin planning your social media strategy for next year’s Expo. Did you observe other attendees using technology and social media applications in ways you hadn’t thought of but would like to try? Could some of the things you tried have been done more effectively or efficiently? You’ve got a year to gear up for next year’s Expo!

This month’s “Human Side” column gives lie to that characterization. It describes a format the military uses for giving complete and crystal clear orders. When it comes to leading a team and directing projects, what is more important than communicating to all the right people exactly what must be done?

When leaders struggle

The plain fact is that the military, all criticism aside, has developed excellent methods for training and developing leaders — officers. Leadership is, to say the least, important for an organization whose job is to put warfighters and high-dollar equipment on the line in battles with incredibly high stakes.

Now, hierarchy and command-control approach that is essential in the military doesn’t translate very well to civilian workplaces. The streets are littered with the bleached bones of managers who tried the “my way or the highway” style of leadership. But that doesn’t mean civilian organizations can’t learn anything from the military.

Look at the five-part order format described in the column and ask yourself if following it, or something similar, could be helpful for a manager in almost any setting.

I know from experience how hard it can be to lead effectively. Many of us get promoted into leadership by virtue of being excellent performers. But we soon discover that being a leader takes entirely different skills than being a technician. And without proper training, we’ll flounder. And the result is that our department’s performance — and probably our service to customers, will suffer.

On the front lines

For an example, look to almost any retail setting you can think of. The fast-food restaurant that served you a chicken sandwich still raw on the inside, the excessive lines at the grocery store checkout, the hardware clerk who sold you exactly the wrong part to fix your kitchen faucet — all these are as likely to be failures of leadership and training as mistakes or negligence by the front-line people.

Many aspects of leadership are challenging — dealing with individual workers’ peculiarities, knowing how to inspire people to unite behind an initiative, giving feedback, fostering teamwork, determining compensation. But one of the most essential requirements of leadership is giving orders or, to put it more delicately, direction.

Finding the line

There’s often a fine line between giving too much direction (being a control freak or a micro-manager) and giving too little. One of my failings as a manager was buying a little too deeply into the idea that a leader should simply tell what must be done and let the subordinate decide how. That works fine when the subordinates are well experienced, but in my case they were not, and they needed more direction than I was giving.

Something like the five-part order format might have been useful for me to know. In all likelihood it would not be appropriate to follow in certain situations, but it could be a useful tool for a manager to have in his or her kit.

The point here is that where leadership skills are concerned, it pays to look for advice and help in multiple places, and the military easily can be one of them. Consider giving the “Human Side” article a good read, and giving the military order format a test spin on a project. It looks like a clear and simple way to get and keep a project on track, especially one — like many municipal and utility projects — that has a lot of moving parts. F

Comments on this column or about any article in this publication may be directed to editor Ted J. Rulseh, 877/953-3301; editor@mswmag.com.

Radiodetection is a Diamond Sponsor of the 10th Annual International Locate Rodeo. The event recognizes the competitive skills of locate technicians in the United States and Canada. Each competitor must perform three locates in a division of their choice (gas, water, power, telcom). A bonus three-minute event tests the skills of competitors on a complex locate involving at least three different lines.

Advanced Waste Receives Permit Modification

Advanced Waste Services’ residual waste processing facility in New Castle, Pa., received a modification to its solid waste permit from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The permit modification will allow the company to accept for processing municipal waste generated from residential, commercial or institutional sources that exhibit characteristics similar to residual waste through the Form U Process, including car wash sediments, service station oils and coolants, municipal wastewater treatment sludges and nonhazardous chemical discharges.

Godwin Pumps Changes Name to Xylem Dewatering Solutions

Godwin Pumps of America Inc. changed its name to Xylem Dewatering Solutions Inc., effective Jan. 1. Godwin will remain the brand name for the company’s Dri-Prime series of pumps.

Vacon to Deliver Drives for Winches in Norway

AC drive manufacturer Vacon will deliver liquid-cooled AC drives for active heave-compensated winches onboard a Norwegian-built inspection, maintenance and repair ship. Delivery of the 17 drives is scheduled for March.

Star Pipe Names CEO, President, Managers

Star Pipe Products named Ramesh Bhutada chief executive officer and chairman, promoting Dan McCutcheon to president. Navin Bhargava was promoted to executive vice president in charge of procurement, while Jason O’Nan was promoted to vice president in charge of sales and marketing. Pete Lisowski was promoted to national sales manager, Doug Allen was promoted to Southeast Division manager, Rich Mazur joined the sales team as territory manager for New England and upstate New York. Brian Pokropski joined the company as territory manager for the Mid-Atlantic area, Brian Kilgore joined the sales team as territory manager for Arizona, Southern Utah and Nevada and Jerry Hughes joined the sales team as territory manager for the Mid-Central area.

TRIC Tools Moves to New Headquarters

TRIC Tools Inc. has moved from Alameda, Calif., to its new headquarters near the Oakland International Airport. The building enables the company to consolidate operations, including a new research and development facility.

Insituform Completes Internal Reorganization

Insituform Technologies Inc. completed an internal reorganization where Delaware parent holding company, Aegion Corp., was created to provide corporate and administrative services for its operating subsidiaries (Insituform Technologies, The Bayou Companies, Corrpro Companies, United Pipeline Systems, CRTS, Fibrwrap Construction Services and Fyfe). In the new structure, Aegion replaces Insituform as the public company. Insituform and its former direct subsidiaries are now direct subsidiaries of Aegion.

Neenah Names VP, Expands Distribution

Neenah Enterprises Inc. named Thomas A. Walton vice president-construction sales and operation. Walton brings 20 years of management, foundry operations and municipal sales to his position. The company also opened a distribution center in Stoughton, Mass., serving customers in the New England region. The center will carry materials for most municipal casting projects.

From Feb. 15-18, NASSCO members in good standing will gather for our biggest networking and technical event of the year at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Nev. The four days will be packed with opportunities to network with other NASSCO members and, more important, take part in technical discussions and presentations that focus on advances in trenchless technologies.

We will introduce new technologies and equipment to our industry in a forum that is designed to teach, not sell. This year, we will learn more about CIPP sensor strip technology, pipe joint defect analysis, sonar/laser/CCTV all-in-one tools, and grouting inspection tools. While attendees will leave with fresh knowledge, they will also partake in social networking events, including our annual golf tournament and banquet.

On Feb. 27, NASSCO will make a series of technical presentations during the Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo in Indianapolis, Ind. The day will be packed with presentations made by NASSCO members on subjects that include CMOM (Capacity, Management, Operation and Maintenance), water main lining, culvert rehabilitation, manhole lining/sonar inspections, and equipment options for the industry.

As always, NASSCO conducts several training programs throughout the year for the Pipeline Assessment Certification Program (PACP) and the Inspector Training Certification Program (ITCP). To date, ITCP has focused on CIPP training. However, in response to many requests, we will provide additional classes for inspection training in pipe bursting and manhole rehabilitation early in 2012.

You can view the entire, updated schedule for PACP and ITCP training at nassco.org. Here are the PACP training schedules and sign-up information for March and April:

• March 6-8, PACP including manholes and laterals, Twinsburg, Ohio; and April 30-May 2, PACP including manholes and laterals, Northville, Mich. Contact kaydoheny@doheny supplies.com or call 248/939-3220.

• March 16-17, PACP only, Nashville, Tenn.; April 3, PACP Recertification, Owings Mills, Md.; and April 9-11, PACP including manholes and laterals, Owings Mills, Md. Contact dawn@nassco.org or call 410/486-3500.

Our mission is to set industry standards for the assessment and rehabilitation of underground pipelines, and to assure the continued acceptance and growth of trenchless technologies. We can achieve this goal only through a dedicated effort to keep our members and the industry informed of new advances and technologies. F

Ted DeBoda is executive director of NASSCO. He can be reached at director@nassco.org. NASSCO is located at 11521 Cronridge Drive, Suite J, Owings Mills, MD 21117

“Right now, we’re at 21 cents per thousand gallons pumped,” says Coley, director of operations for the authority. “That’s about where we need to be.”

Along with pipe corrosion, the cost of power is the major challenge for the authority as it pumps drinking water from the mainland to the inhabitants of the Keys, a 130-mile-long string of islands that stretches into the Atlantic Ocean off the southern tip of Florida.

“We spend more than $3.5 million a year on electricity, most of it for pumping,” Coley says. “We needed a system that would enable us to monitor and control those costs. When we couldn’t find one suitable for us in the marketplace, we decided to develop our own.” The system has been operational for just a few months, so comprehensive cost data isn’t yet available. But Coley says the authority is already optimizing pumping strategies based on power costs.

Water to paradise

The authority was formed in 1937 to ensure a reliable source of clean drinking water for the Keys. Before that, residents and visitors relied on cisterns to collect rainwater, and on freshwater shipped in from the mainland by railcar or barge.

A steel water pipeline was constructed in 1939 and enlarged in 1980, linking the authority’s J. Robert Dean water treatment plant in Florida City with the chain of islands all the way to Key West. The authority’s motto is “Bringing Water to Paradise.”

The Biscayne Aquifer is the primary water source. At the Dean treatment facility, the water is treated with lime softening, passed through dual-media filters, and dosed with chloramines and fluoride. The plant also includes a reverse osmosis desalination system so that, if demand calls for it, up to 6 million gpd of water from the brackish Floridan Aquifer can be added to the supply.

Five 800 hp motors and a pair of 500 hp motors (SPX Flow Technology vertical turbine and Flowserve units) move the water through the transmission line at pressures up to 250 psi. The pipe begins with a diameter of 36 inches, narrows to 24 inches, and ends at 18 inches. In case of a power outage, the authority maintains four 1,000 hp diesel pumps and 45,000 gallons of fuel in storage. The diesel pumps were run for 28 days continuously after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Booster pumping stations at Key Largo, Long Key, Marathon, Ramrod Key and Stock Island maintain the desired line pressures. Distribution pipelines connect with the mainline and carry water into the various communities on the islands. In case of emergencies, a number of storage facilities throughout the system provide 45 million gallons of reserve capacity. Seawater desalination plants at Stock Island and Marathon are available to produce up to 3 million gallons of freshwater if needed.

Monitoring power

Everyone on the authority’s payroll is energy-conscious and works to reduce power consumption. But certain conditions were working against the authority’s ability to achieve the most economical performance.

For one thing, the operators at the pipeline control center in Florida City practiced various pumping strategies based on who was in charge of the pipeline at the time. For another, the authority has a variety of pumps in service along the line, including older and newer models, some variable-speed drive and others constant drive. And three different power suppliers serve the authority: Florida Power and Light at the beginning of the service area and smaller regional companies serving the middle and far western end of the Keys. All have different rate structures.

“We knew we had to reduce our power consumption, but when I talked with our executive director about the situation, it was obvious that turning off the lights and shutting down our computers at night wasn’t going to be enough,” says Coley. At about this point, Coley recalled his earlier days as a water manager in northern Alabama and his visit to a local automobile tire manufacturing plant.

“One of the things that struck me was that they had a system that told them what the power usage was per tire, and as power costs fluctuated, when was the best time to make tires,” Coley says. “If the power costs got too high, they might just shut the line down and send everybody home until the costs came down again.”

The right units

That got him thinking about a similar system for the authority’s water system. “I shared these ideas with our IT people, and they went out into the market, but they couldn’t find anything commercially available that would accomplish what we wanted,” he says. “Finally, we reached out to the engineering firm CH2M HILL and asked them to design such a system for us.”

Coley was adamant on one point: He wanted the system to report energy consumption in cents per thousand gallons. “That’s what we understand in the water business,” he says. “I didn’t want something that expressed results in kilowatt-hours or engineering calculations.”

The system uses monitoring equipment from Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, positioned at all five of the major pumping stations on the transmission line. The equipment tracks the real-time cost of power from the various suppliers, as well as the power consumption at all pumping stations. There are 14 pumps in the system, supplied by Fairbanks Morse, Aurora, Flygt (Xylem), SPX Flow Technology, Goulds Water Technology and Flowserve.

Depending on the location, the equipment can monitor power consumption at an entire site like a booster station, or at an individual feeder location or specific motor. At each location, a programmable logic controller (PLC) polls the power monitor for the real-time kW, then uses this reading to perform calculations based on the utility rate structure for that site. An additional PLC in Florida City summarizes data from all the other PLCs.

Wonderware (Invensys Operations Management) software reads and displays the values from the PLCs, logs ampere and volt data from each power monitor, and stores these calculated values for historical trending. A dedicated server at Key West generates reports using XLReporter software, and updates the historical database.

Many benefits

Coley ticks off some examples of how the power monitoring system helps his team save on electrical costs:

• By monitoring power consumption and the fluctuating electricity rates, the authority can determine the best (and worst) times to top off the system’s storage tanks.

• The team can use the power suppliers offering the lowest-cost electricity at any given time, limit or higher-cost sources, or eliminate them if their rates are too high.

• Operators can determine whether it is more cost-effective to operate a particular pump at 100 percent of capacity, or keep it at a lower flow rate and supplement the flow with another pump that costs less to operate.

• Operators can track changes in demand (important in view of the transient tourist population) and supply adequate drinking water at lowest possible pumping costs.

While Coley and the authority won’t have specific power costs savings numbers until the system has been in operation for a few more months, he is pleased with the early results. The ability to know the exact cost per thousand gallons pumped at any time, and to see the immediate effects of changes to the pumping protocol, make the system already worth the investment.

Furthermore, “we are enjoying some positive publicity because of the innovation,” says Coley. “We get visitors all the time. They want to see the system in action and ask how we did it.” For water professionals, that’s just one more reason to make a trip to “Paradise.”

Hagele got his wish when the city built its Environmental Operations Park in 2002. The facility includes a 10-acre automated wastewater treatment plant that handles 4 mgd without chemical or mechanical means. FOG in the all-natural process would lower pH and affect the microorganisms, so engineers limited it to 25 mg/l at the headworks — the strictest requirement in the state.

Hagele, now a Grade 3 water and wastewater operator, also completed the Pretreatment Facility Inspection Program from California State University, Sacramento. That background, communication skills, and rapport led to his becoming the city’s pretreatment coordinator.

Hagele went restaurant to restaurant, educating owners about the effects of FOG. He developed relationships with Community Development and Engineering. He also established standards and construction guides for grease interceptors and directions on how pumpers should clean them. Restaurant owners and managers vilified him, but Hagele persevered, driving home the point that businesses generating waste products should be responsible for them.

Four years passed before the pretreatment program produced results. Today, hot spots are down from 17 to five, and only one is grease related. Overflows have been reduced from 12 to one per year. In 2007, the Arizona Water and Pollution Control Association named Hagele the Wastewater Pretreatment Operator of the Year.

Voyage of discovery

Before 2002, monsoons scoured the sewers, delivering huge chunks of grease to the headworks. One 7-foot-tall mound went through the bar screen, bent the chain and motor, and broke the screen. Vibrations from the impact moved the dump container to one side.

“People fight change, especially if it affects profit margins,” says Hagele. “But if you stay strong and true to your objective and overcome that fight, change will work. As proof, we haven’t had a problem at the headworks since 2007.”

Hagele began by visiting every business that could jeopardize the eight treatment lagoons. He stressed the proper way to dispose of waste and promoted a spirit of cooperation. “If you succeed, we succeed,” he told them, “and we will work with you to achieve that goal.”

Most food establishments didn’t even know what a grease trap was, or the difference between a trap and interceptor. “A grease trap is measured in pounds and an interceptor in gallons,” says Hagele. “A standard 40-pound grease trap holds 20 gallons. That’s too small to do any good.”

Hidden problems

The 2002 city standard specified that food establishments have a 1,500-gallon three-compartment grease interceptor with 5-gallon stand-alone sample box. When Hagele enforced the rule, managers went through the roof. One sandwich shop owner insisted that installing an interceptor was unnecessary because no food was cooked — and yet his grease trap was full.

Hagele tracked down the culprits — squeeze containers for ketchup, mayonnaise, and salad dressings. A health department rule prevents workers from topping off bottles, so they rinsed some 20 containers five to 20 times per day. “That’s a lot of FOG going down the drain,” says Hagele.

Even after the owner installed the interceptor, FOG samples averaged 360 mg/l. Hagele used the city’s SPE-DEX 1000XL extractor designed for [EPA] method 1664A from Horizon Technology to analyze samples. The manager solved the problem by putting baby bottle liners in the containers. When they are nearly empty, workers toss the liners in the trash.

“FOG is a bigger problem than most people realize,” says Hagele. “For example, soups have lots of fat, yet even my department thought only about fried foods. Broadening that mindset was one key to success.”

Dig in, stand firm

Another key was insisting on quality materials. Some concrete interceptors delivered to the city leaked, undermining the soil and causing larger leaks. In one case, the material was so porous that the tank burst under pressure. Another arrived green. Others had two compartments with provisions for a slide-in baffle.

Hagele asked Bob Camp, building administrator, to conduct 24-hour leak tests on the tanks. “This is one example of how the relationships I built with Public Works and City Hall proved invaluable,” he says. “My request was an extra headache for Bob, but he saw its value and agreed.”

Rejecting inadequate tanks and establishing construction standards had the desired effect. “The ones we receive now look like works of art,” says Hagele. “And business owners are assured of purchasing high-quality tanks.”

He then placed the burden of sizing grease interceptors on the city’s mechanical engineers. If the tanks failed the FOG limit, which Hagele increased to an achievable 100 mg/l, those engineers had to rectify the problem. They began calling Community Development and were referred to Hagele. He explained the sizing process and the importance of going larger rather than smaller.

“We hadn’t communicated with mechanical engineers before, and opening that channel was crucial,” says Hagele. “For instance, they allowed one woman to put a bakery in a strip mall without installing a grease interceptor.

“I didn’t see the zoning inspection until after the business opened. When I told the owner that she needed a grease trap to stay in business, she was beside herself, having spent all her money on equipment. This never would have happened had the engineer called me. Potential businesses need to know the facts from the moment they apply for the license.”

Communication with Community Development was another key as it enabled Hagele to examine permits, meet with new business owners, and explain pretreatment requirements. He also reviewed zoning inspections for compliance. “The teamwork between divisions has improved food service compliance from 10 percent when the program began to 85 percent,” he says.

Squeaky clean

Hagele’s biggest challenge was strip mall owners renting space without grease interceptors to food establishments. “No business will install a $20,000 interceptor in a rented building,” he says. “We told property owners not to rent to anyone unwilling to install an interceptor. They didn’t like that, so most landlords now split the cost with the lessees.”

Installing grease interceptors was only half the equation. Getting them clean was Hagele’s next challenge. He followed pumpers to learn what they did and saw that some cleaned a 3,000-gallon interceptor in as little as 15 minutes. After they left, he opened the tank. “They had pumped the sample box and removed the top layer of solidified grease, but left the greasy water,” he says.

Hagele showed such tanks to restaurant managers. He explained that the walls were thick with grease, which diminished the tank’s capacity, caused samples to exceed FOG limits, and increased the frequency of pumpouts. “It should take one-and-a-half hours to clean a full tank the first time,” says Hagele. “From then on, maintenance is simple.” When pumpers responded to the callback, managers made sure they pumped the water, then pressure washed or scraped the tank walls.

The experience made Hagele more aware of maintenance logs. If they showed recent cleanings, he opened the tanks for managers. Often, the compartments were full. “I explained that FOG left for long periods lowers pH, and acidic water will erode concrete interceptors in time,” he says. “They all became very attentive to the pumpers’ work, but the key was having someone inspect on a regular basis.”

Persuasive tools

Hagele has yet to fine or close non-compliant businesses — instead, he uses persistence and various persuasive tools to sway attitudes. Besides drawing monthly samples, he works with collections system crews to televise sewers downstream of resistant establishments using a CUES camera van and OZII pan-and-tilt camera on an Ultra Shorty 21 transporter. After creating a history on the pipe, he shows it to owners.

He suggests that if a stoppage occurred and properties were inundated, his documentation would stand up in court. “Reason with them like that and they’ll come around,” he says. “But it took four years of pulling samples and televising to see results.”

To educate the constantly changing restaurant personnel, Hagele created a slide presentation dramatizing what happens when FOG goes down the drain. Images show laterals and mains coated with it. Hagele equates FOG to cholesterol in arteries. His next image of a 100 percent blocked pipe is followed by a contractor saw-cutting a floor to remove a clog that overwhelmed a jet rodder. “They learn that our program protects infrastructure, property, and our wastewater facility process,” he says.

Hagele discovered another FOG source when he watched staff cleaning greasy kitchen mats in restaurant parking lots instead of in mop sinks. The detergents and hot water eroded the asphalt and ran into storm drains. Hagele specified that food establishments install 50-square-foot outside curbed washdown areas plumbed to the grease interceptor. “Once owners realized that they didn’t have to resurface the asphalt again, they accepted the idea,” he says.

Getting it right

While working with restaurants on FOG control, the city inspected and cleaned its 200 miles of sewer every year with a Vactor 2100 combination truck with 18-cubic-yard debris tank, dual-action water pump delivering 60 gpm/2,500 psi, and 1,000-gallon water tank with heat exchanger. Crews use a Warthog nozzle from StoneAge to remove grease and a floor cleaner with eight jets from KEG Technologies to clean debris in the inverts. But until the pretreatment program took root, they never caught up with the incoming FOG.

“It takes manpower and time to jet and vacuum grease, then dump it at our drying beds,” says Hagele. “By requiring properly sized and maintained grease interceptors, the FOG is gone and we clean the lines quicker and better.

“I don’t know where this program would be without the cooperation of city engineers, Community Development, sewer televising and cleaning crews, and other agencies. Their expertise made it possible to establish ordinances and standards that enabled us to get it right from the beginning.”

The area gets no snowmelt, and rainfall averages 12 inches a year, mostly from January through March. So developers typically paid little attention to construction runoff and over-irrigation.

Although the city abided by its MS4 permit requirements, it had no formal NPDES program until it hired Aldo Licitra in 2003. As an associate engineer in the Public Works Department, his job was to expand everyone’s knowledge of the regulations, then enforce them.

At first, Licitra faced stiff resistance from developers and contractors. He also struggled with natural legacy pollutants that tainted the city’s reputation with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Licitra walks a tightrope between appeasing developers and protecting the environment. The Santa Margarita River is one of the last free-flowing rivers in Southern California and is mostly pristine. In 2003, the NPDES budget was $365,000. When the new MS4 permit came out in November 2010, the budget rose to $900,000. Overcoming the burden placed on the general fund and taxpayers is the city’s next challenge.

End of the line

Temecula, in southwest Riverside County, lies 60 miles north of San Diego, between the upper and lower regions of the 740-square-mile Santa Margarita Watershed. “Everything from the upper watershed runs through our city, and that led the regional board to identify us as the nearest jurisdiction when it identifies pollutants downstream,” says Licitra. “But it isn’t always ours.”

The city incorporated in 1989, but explaining its 30-square-mile boundary to the regional board remains a challenge. “They believe that Temecula Valley and the wineries belong to us instead of the county,” Licitra says. “Consequently, we’ve been held responsible for most of the nutrients coming off those properties.”

The area’s 18 wineries constitute the most important winemaking region in Southern California. Licitra visited some of them in 2003 to check for illegal discharges and found that most owners knew about water-quality issues and had some mitigation measures in place to capture runoff.

Nevertheless, the board claimed the city had a major agricultural problem because laboratory analysis of creek sediment showed phosphorus and nitrogen. “We have no agriculture,” says Licitra. “Those pollutants are from decades of agricultural runoff.”

Nutrient levels rose from 2000 to 2007, when the city boomed with the construction of master-planned communities, large commercial centers, light industrial parks, medical office buildings, and homes. To attract buyers, developers over-irrigated lush lawns and flower gardens. As urbanization continued, landscape runoff ended up in Murrieta and Temecula Creeks, which are dry nine to 10 months per year.

Licitra hit the pavement with his stormwater campaign. “People appreciate the quality of life here and the beauty around them,” he says. “They don’t want to spoil it. Most changed their habits when informed about the consequences of their actions.”

Teamwork

To carry out NPDES requirements more effectively, the county, the city, and 26 other municipalities agreed that the Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District would be the principal permittee, and they would be co-permittees.

Because Riverside County was one of the last to go through the MS4 permit process, the district adapted stormwater education materials from other counties further along in the process. To ensure consistent in-house training, the district and co-permittees hired engineering firm AEI-CASC Consulting to teach NPDES compliance seminars.

“We wanted staff from all the cities to be on par with each other,” says Licitra. “The courses were far more in-depth than the information we gave to the development community, and each module dealt with a different aspect of our MS4 permit.”

Meanwhile, Licitra visited construction sites and talked to contractors and developers about what was coming. After 15 years as an environmental consultant in the private sector, he understood NPDES and knew how to broach the subject in a non-threatening manner. “My NPDES inspector at the time had worked with other cities and knew how to intercept pollutants,” says Licitra.

The two explained that controlling sediment runoff was just the start. After that, contractors had to control runoff from paints, concrete washouts, and non-visible pollutants. “We used the back door approach, explaining how the mandate was passed down to the city, and now we were obligated to enforce it,” says Licitra. “We didn’t want them viewing us as the originator of all their environmental compliance problems.”

Balancing act

The work was complicated and challenging because many developers didn’t know how to address the requirements. They wanted details on what to install and how to install it, but Licitra could offer only general guidance.

“If we told them how to install a pollution control device and they did it wrong, there was a chance that the liability could fall back on the city,” he says. “Furthermore, the regional board could view any violations and citations they issued to developers as the city not doing its job well. It was a balancing act between protecting the city and protecting developers.”

The development community reacted with frustration and stiff resistance. “The requirements had been around for 10 years, but this was the first time municipalities were mandated to enforce them to that extent,” says Licitra. “We tried everything possible to work with contractors without coming down like the new sheriff in town.”

The co-permittees opened many in-house training workshops to developers. Licitra got support from the Business and Industry Association (BIA) representing contractors and developers. BIA leaders explained to members how the permits would affect the industry and urged them to comply. The association also developed its own NPDES training program for inspectors, engineers, water-quality managers, planners, and building and safety staff.

Licitra spoke at BIA and Inland Erosion Control annual seminars and continues to do so. “It allows me to share information and keep us all on the same page,” he says. “Our task now is to ensure that we prevent any additional pollutants from commingling with legacy pollutants.”

Downstream dilemma

The fourth-term NPDES permit deems irrigation runoff an illegal discharge, and the regional board directed the city to decide how to regulate it. Licitra distributed education materials about the ruling and collaborated with the Rancho California Water District, the city’s water provider. Growing concerns over drought caused the district to raise rates to deter excess water consumption. It also implemented a tiered rate system where users paid more if they surpassed a base allotment.

The drought of 2009 created a new stormwater challenge. Fires in much of the county left deep deposits of ash on the ground. “It was as fine as talcum powder and we’d sink in while walking through it,” says Licitra. “Then the rainy season arrived. We knew the regional board would be on us if that volume of ash reached Murrieta Creek.”

The city, Riverside County, and private entities collaborated to control the ash, building four large detention basins to intercept the water as it flowed over business and industrial sites. Property owner associations cleaned the basins after each rain. Despite their efforts, residual waterborne ash flowed into the storm drains.

Because the fires were widespread and overwhelming, the regional board finally issued temporary permit exemptions. “Vegetation has grown in the burn areas, reducing the residual ash problem with every passing year,” says Licitra.

Pristine environment

Long-held respect for open spaces is helping Temecula meet its fourth-term permit. The city, population 105,000 and 90 to 95 percent built out, has 34 parks and numerous conservation set-asides. In addition, suburban communities with large lots limit density, as do large master-planned communities that include required open spaces. In 2011, the city annexed 500 hillside acres.

“We could build there, but the area is just too beautiful,” says Licitra. “Residents want natural places set aside for conservation.” That dovetails with the three main elements of the new low-impact development (LID) requirements:

• Stop construction and return the environment to pre-development conditions.

• Conserve what is on site if building must proceed.

• If unable to do that, trap, retain, and infiltrate a specific volume of stormwater, or first flush, to replenish the groundwater.

“The big LID guns are infiltration and retention-based BMPs such as basins, rain gardens, ponds, infiltration trenches, and biocells,” says Licitra. “If they aren’t feasible, we recommend treatment-based BMPs like sand filters. Manufactured products are the last choice because they are not considered natural BMPs.”

Making progress

Public Works is responsible for 70 miles of storm drains and 1,650 catch basins. “A dedicated crew inspects the basins just before the rainy season, then again later in the year,” says Licitra. “They clean those with filters twice a year to avoid flooding and change the filters annually.”

The crew uses a Vac-Tron PMD 500 GT vacuum truck with a 500-gallon debris tank, 225-gallon freshwater tank, and a jetter putting out 15 gpm/2,200 psi. They capture cleaning water at the outlet of the basin box to keep it from reaching the creeks.

“Maintenance isn’t as intense anymore,” says Licitra. “Going door- to-door in neighborhoods and talking with people about dumping trash into storm drain pipes really paid off. Gaining the residential and development communities’ cooperation has been through one-on-one contact. The accomplishments of the stormwater program are a result of the support I receive from our executive management team.”

Licitra worries that the new prescriptive permit will remove developers’ creative input and cast the city in the role of enforcer. “I’m proud of our program, but these new requirements will be a lot more difficult to implement and manage,” he says. “It’s the difference between taking baby steps and an Olympic broad jump.”

FlowWorks is a Web-based system that receives data from any major manufacturer’s flowmeters, rain gauges and other monitoring devices, adds information from SCADA systems, and pulls it all together in a single, secure environment where engineers can use tools to perform analyses and create and publish reports.

The system also collects data from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) environmental stations. Users can graph, analyze and edit real-time data and easily perform advanced calculations. The information can be used for critical functions such as inflow and infiltration (I&I) analysis and creation of rainfall intensity, duration and frequency (IDF) curves.

The data helps support regulatory compliance as well as system condition assessment and system modeling for capital planning on new projects and system rehabilitation initiatives. The analyses and calculations save significant time for in-house engineering departments and consultants, says Timothy Hicks, company president.

Hicks demonstrated the FlowWorks offering via Web meeting, using a special demonstration model that draws data from actual in-the-field monitoring devices.

Walk-around

Hicks described FlowWorks as a massive SQL database. “All the data comes to our central database, fully secure, fully supervised, and backed up hourly, daily and weekly,” says Hicks. Customers can access their data — and only their own data — securely from any computer.

While SCADA information can feed the system, FlowWorks never “reaches into” the customer’s SCADA system, and so that environment remains secure, Hicks noted. Instead, FlowWorks sets up a system to which the customer transfers data files according to a predetermined schedule.

On top of the database is a computation engine that allows data from individual channels to be combined, monitored, alarmed and analyzed. Along with that customers have access to utilities that allow them to graph, analyze and report. Data — including manual data — comes into the system at intervals the customer chooses. “Typically, data is live on FlowWorks within three minutes of being received by our server,” Hicks says.

Data comes from stations — physical locations such as a lift station or rainfall station. Each station can have multiple inputs — channels — such as for flow, level and velocity in a sanitary sewer.

Operation

To begin the demonstration, Hicks opened the front screen to reveal a map, then used the mouse thumbwheel to expand the map and show the company’s demonstration site in the area of San Diego, Calif. Colored dots on the map represented live stations being used anonymously for demonstrations, with clients’ permission (Figure 1).

Each station was color-coded for its current status (green for properly functioning, yellow for late sending data, orange and red for alarm conditions, and blue for manual stations) and labeled with a letter for the type of station (for example, lift station or climate station).

A click on a sanitary sewer station brought up a box on the screen revealing that data was coming from a Teledyne Isco flowmeter, showing the most recent data sent, and listing the tools associated with the station. An expanded view also showed the station’s physical location (latitude and longitude), the data transmission interval (240 minutes), and the latest flow, level and velocity information.

Hicks then clicked a Tools icon and created a graph showing the last 30 days of flow, level and velocity data (Figure 2). Next, he clicked to open a rainfall station and quickly generated a graph with rainfall plotted against flow, level and velocity (Figure 3).

Zeroing in on a rainfall peak that clearly influenced the flow, Hicks drew a zoom box around it and expanded that section of the graph. He then adjusted the graph to show 24 hours of data. As he moved the cursor over the graph, a “measuring stick” tool revealed the instantaneous flow, level and velocity for any point in time during that day (Figure 4).

Next, Hicks demonstrated scatter plotting, pulling up a graph of all individual data points for the past 30 days, plotting flow velocity versus level. He then went to the Tools menu and performed a curve fit. “We can do linear curves, or polynomial, exponential, Manning’s equation, logarithmic, and others,” he said. “If we’re trying to prove data and figure out what’s going on down in the sewers, this is a very powerful tool.”

He pointed out a cluster of data points separated from the curve, representing “outlier” data points likely caused by an issue such as a rag stuck in the flowmeter (Figure 5). “The customer can set an alarm based on this data, so that if they start getting data points that far away from the curve, the system sends a text or email to a technician saying go and inspect the meter,” Hicks said.

Returning to the rainfall and flow/level/velocity graph, Hicks demonstrated how to use an editing tool to replace clearly inaccurate data. The ability to edit data is crucial to the ultimate accuracy of sewer system modeling, he noted.

“If you want to model off the data, but you had a bird build a nest in a rain gauge, you would want to replace the flawed data with sensible data so it doesn’t skew your model. With this tool, you can cut and replace the data with some data from another gauge that was working,” Hicks said.

Finally, Hicks demonstrated how to export a data graph into a Microsoft Word document as a high-resolution JPEG, or into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for analysis.

Hicks then turned to the calculation engine, used to perform advanced mathematical functions on real-time data. As an example, he showed how to use velocity and level information to calculate flow. “You can also use calculation to add channels together, such as by adding all upstream monitors to determine the total flow out of a basin,” he observed.

He then reviewed an alarm screen showing stations in alarm, with orange and red (most severe) to indicate the alarm level. Users can query each station to see what rule was violated to trigger the alarm and to view an alarm history. Hicks also demonstrated procedures for using an Alarm Configuration tab to set up alarms.

Next, Hicks demonstrated how the system makes use of rainfall statistics and analyzes rainfall data for sewer system operation and planning purposes. Data from rain gauges on the customer’s system comes into the FlowWorks database and automatically populates rainfall charts. “These are statistical tables of how much rain fell in which intervals, and that is a big deal if you’re doing modeling,” Hicks observed. “These charts are auto-generated in real time.”

Hicks showed how users can link a rainfall station to FlowWorks and use the intensity, duration and frequency (IDF) tool to plot a storm event as it occurs, in seconds. The tool produces historic rainfall curves depicting 2-year, 5-year, 10-year, 25-year, 50-year and 100-year storms (color-coded) and also plots a curve (in red) showing the current storm event (Figure 6). The curves help users identify when an interval during a storm event is producing statistically significant rainfall.

“Many clients use this tool to ‘watch’ a storm event as it occurs from the comfort of their desk and send out their operations crews as a storm event hits a certain severity rating to areas where they know issues may occur,” Hicks said.

In conclusion, Hicks demonstrated an I&I Estimator tool. It produced a graph on which a blue tracing indicated the sewer system’s response from a rainfall event and a green tracing showed the dry-weather diurnal pattern. The system automatically subtracts the two to reveal the rainfall-dependent I&I (Figure 7). “This is the holy grail for municipal wastewater engineers,” Hicks said.

Observer comments

It was easy to see how the graphic, reporting and calculation capabilities in FlowWorks could save engineers from significant amounts of tedious work. The various reporting and calculation functions appeared to be intuitive, at least for an engineer or other professional experienced in sewer system operations and planning.

The system appeared to provide a “one-seat, one-screen” interface for reviewing the status of individual stations on an entire flow monitoring network and for making essential calculations to support planning decisions.

Supplier comments

Hicks emphasized the engineering time savings the FlowWorks tools provide. For example, he stated that in calculating rainfall-dependent I&I, the tools “turn weeks of spreadsheet work into a couple of hours of FlowWorks work.”

He noted that FlowWorks is purely a data manager: “We do not sell any hardware, software or field equipment, and we do not do any engineering. We work with the customer’s equipment, engineering company and flow service provider to make sure they have what they need.

“Most customers already have the necessary equipment and only have to direct their data to FlowWorks. It doesn’t matter whose meters they have, and it doesn’t matter how they are receiving data. We work with their system to manage their data.”

He noted that the database accommodates photos, videos, text and Word documents, and assorted other information. There is no limit to the amount of data customers can store, and FlowWorks stores historic data at no additional charge for as long as a user remains a customer.