As eastern Iowa regional manager for PeopleServicEInc., Dennis White sums up his job with just one word: Advocacy.
“I’m responsible for hiring operators and getting them started, setting up all operational procedures, and ensuring that they provide the towns with the services for which they contracted,” says White, whose water and wastewater contract operations company is based in Omaha, Neb.
“I currently work with 13 employees in 17 contracts throughout eastern Iowa,” says White. “As an advocate, it’s my job to see that plants are run as efficiently and maintained as best as possible. I try to keep them in compliance and oversee reports to state agencies. Occasionally, I defend operators when clients ask them to do something against regulations, of which they may not be aware.”
White functions as a facilitator and trainer, referee, regional manager, compliance officer and mentor. Although he wears many hats, he is a treatment plant operator at heart, always looking at things through the operators’ eyes.
That approach to leadership helped White win the 2007 Iowa Water Pollution Control Federation William D. Hatfield award for outstanding wastewater treatment operator performance and professionalism.
Big and ugly
Customers of PeopleService include smaller communities with populations from 500 to 10,000. As most fall somewhere in the middle, clients’ water and wastewater plants are usually one-man operations, which PeopleService supports with training, guidance, equipment and extra help when really big problems raise their heads.
Big and ugly made its way to eastern Iowa via the 2008 flood, an event remembered by residents as Iowa’s Katrina. “Most damage occurred on the week of June 8,” White recalls. “While all 17 towns we serve were affected, the treatment facilities at Elkader and Nashua were hit hardest.
“At Elkader, sewer lines washed away, lift stations were lost, and the wastewater system suffered major infrastructure damage. The Nashua plant was submerged. Once the water receded, the operator pumped out the remaining water, then rescued the motors, pumps and anything else he could drag out.”
The region’s water and wastewater treatment plant network was stretched to breaking, and plant personnel found their duties divided between resuscitating drowned facilities and restoring lost pump service. Operators averaged 20-hour days.
White, meanwhile, traveled from town to town, supervising rescue efforts, pitching in when necessary, and performing public relations to ease concerns of city officials and citizens under siege. When an operator left in mid-June and White couldn’t find a replacement, he ran the plant until an operator was hired.
“Dennis White’s job is also his vocation,” observes PeopleService president Alan Meyer. “He believes in our industry, and takes a personal stake in its performance. We’re not talking here about an out-of-sight, out-of-mind sort of guy. Dennis’ standards are high, and he’s not the type to cut corners.
“Like anyone else, he takes time off, but a part of Dennis is always on duty. His other core superlative is his commitment to people, which is nothing short of total. He cares about operators, and where clients are concerned, bends over backward to make certain they receive what they were promised, and then some.”
Getting there
The wastewater business was a natural choice for White. “Dad was a pipefitter/plumber, and as I grew up, I traveled the same career path,” herecalls. “My first job was laying sewer lines for contractors. That experience got me into the pipefitters union. When my wife wanted to be nearer her family, we relocated to Iowa, where I started working for a plumber in the small town where we lived.”
Looking for more employment benefits, White took a job with the City of Clarinda sewer department. Seeing that he needed to learn more about the industry, “I took home study courses and worked my way up to collection system and treatment plant superintendent,” White says.
In 1992, he attended a conference on contract operations. He liked what he heard. “Not long after the conference, I applied for a job with Peoples Natural Gas, which at the time was launching a water/wastewater contracts operation firm called PeopleService,” he recalls.
White believes wastewater treatment operations should be run with the same financial discipline as utilities. He regards gas and telephone utilities as good models. They also are proficient at promoting themselves as places to build viable careers. White wants the wastewater treatment industry to do the same.
“The ‘crying Indian’ Keep America Beautiful public service announcements of the early 1970s had a great effect on me as a kid,” says White. “Why can’t our industry create a similar campaign? By treating wastewater, we have Earth Day every day. We invented green long before it became a popular slogan. We are the original environmentalists. The public needs to recognize this.”
The pay factor
A key challenge facing the industry, he says, is a shortage of operators, which is becoming worse as more retire. White observes that the wastewater profession lacks the luster to attract young people, who are drawn to flashier professions like law, business, technology and medicine.
Money is another factor — perhaps even more powerful than glamour, White believes. He sees private companies offering highly competitive salaries and benefits, helping drive compensation higher in the municipal sector as well.
“To pay the least amount to those who treat what becomes the water we drink says a lot about our society,” says White. “We must stop looking at ourselves as just city employees and begin seeing ourselves as professionals. We have to become better at promoting the importance of what we do to elevate our pay scale.”
In 2008, PeopleService began an apprenticeship program. “Our goal is to place untrained individuals in treatment plants for one to two years, pay them a salary, pay for their schooling, and provide on-the-job training so they can take their operators’ certification exam,” says White.
PeopleService covers Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and some of western Illinois. Indivi-duals can apprentice in some of these states, but once certified, they must accept the first suitable opening within the company. The program, still in its infancy, has two apprentices working in Minnesota and one in southwest Iowa.
Industry in transition
Other issues affecting the industry are permitting requirements and tech-nology. White notes that permitting parameters have become more stringent with advances in scientific knowledge and environmental awareness.
In Iowa, regulations are tightening limits on BOD, TSS, fecal coliforms, ammonia nitrogen, TKN, and soon, phosphorous. Even factors such as temperature may soon see much tighter control depending on the type of plant.
“New permit parameters for Iowa treatment plants will have a far-reaching effect on the wastewater industry,” White says. “In my opinion, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources doesn’t do enough to educate affected parties about what’s being proposed.
“When a new plant goes up, or is upgraded, its anticipated lifetime is 20 years. With fair warning, a module could be added in a new plant’s design phase so the industry doesn’t wind up scrapping a five-year-old facility to meet new permitting parameters.”
Technology — and especially automation — holds great promise for the industry, White believes. Solutions such as SCADA are likely to see greater adoption as municipalities cope with the industry’s personnel shortage, and very small communities find more practical ways to facilitate limited onsite operation.
“With technologies like SCADA, an operator can check plant controls via the Internet from his home,” White says. “It’s conceivable that the same operator would need to visit the plant in person very infrequently, perhaps only when absolutely necessary.
“An operator working in tandem with technology would constitute 24/7 monitoring, greatly enhancing operation quality overall. More automation is coming, and it will do this industry a world of good.”
