Wastewater operators were hired by the thousands in the early 1970s after passage of the Clean Water Act. Now, many of those operators are nearing retirement, and that’s a big challenge for the wastewater treatment industry.
Almost as serious as the loss of people power is the loss of institutional memory — of operators who know their plants intimately and understand the moods, quirks and intricacies of the treatment processes and equipment.
The Water Environment Federation and state and regional associations are addressing the staffing crisis (and it is a crisis) in various ways. Meanwhile, in California, a group of 14 clean water agencies in the San Francisco Bay area has tackled the issue head-on, working with a community college to create an education program to prepare young people for wastewater careers.
Thus far, it has been so successful that the courses are routinely full, even without any advertising. As a result, the districts are starting to build a pipeline of new talent, not only for themselves but for any treatment agency where the students might decide to apply what they learn.
One agency deeply involved in the program is the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District, headquartered in Martinez. The district also operates its own training program that helps newly hired operators in training earn their state certifications and move quickly up the ranks.
Doug Craig, director of plant operations, and Michael Scahill, communication services manager, talked with Treatment Plant Operator about the need for new operators, the district’s own training initiatives, and the collaborative education program in the Bay Area.
TPO:
How serious is the potential shortage of wastewater operators?
Scahill:
About three years ago, we started looking at succession planning and the status of baby boomer retirements facing the water and wastewater industry. We saw that within 10 years, some 50 percent of operators would be retiring. In California alone, between water and wastewater, that’s close to 8,000 people. It’s also a national problem.
TPO:
In a more immediate sense, how does the wave of retirements affect your facility?
Craig:
Two of our long-time shift supervisors recently gave me their resignations — they are retiring. These two gentlemen were each here for 30 years, and they watched a lot of what is here get built from the ground up — the best training there can be.
They are extraordinarily competent and capable in all aspects of operations, and they are both excellent supervisors. To replace people like that is not easy. So we can’t afford to focus on the low end of the operator spectrum.
We have to focus on moving our operators to the highest levels possible and preparing the more seasoned ones to fill the supervisory positions when experienced people leave. We need to make sure they are confident and capable and that we have, as far as possible, a seamless transition to new people sitting at the helm and running the main controls. It’s a whole program that has to be addressed continuously.
TPO:
How have treatment agencies typically dealt with operator recruitment and staffing?
Craig:
Historically, we would all go out and advertise for the positions. It was a money game, where we would steal people from each other. As a group of agencies here in the Bay area, we decided that wasn’t going to increase the pool of operators available.
TPO:
What led to the creation of the cooperative education program for new operators?
Scahill:
When we started looking for new sources of operators, the major frustration was that there were no training programs in our county or anywhere near us. The closest training program was at Solano Community College, 40 miles north of here, in Fairfield. They had an eight-course program in Water and Wastewater Technology.
We knew it wouldn’t be practical to send people there because of the travel time and the cost. So, in essence, we contracted with Solano College to bring the courses here to Contra Costa County. Once we succeeded with our first semester, we moved it to three other sites in the county and to one site to the south in Alameda County.
TPO:
How difficult was it to get the program established and fill the courses?
Scahill:
For our first semester, which started August 2007, we offered three courses. Just from word of mouth, and from the group of 10 agencies that initially put up money for the program, the courses filled up in less than two weeks, with 30 people per class. We did no advertising and issued no press releases.
TPO:
What kinds of people are coming into the program?
Scahill:
We get a combination of people coming straight out of high school, and people working in other industries. At least a third, and sometimes approaching half, are people who are working in water and wastewater or know someone in the industry. The first semester, we had three students attend who were children of employees at our district. We see people coming from a broad geographic area.
TPO:
How exactly is the program structured?
Craig:
We contract with Solano Community College. They approve the instructors. All of the instructors work for one of the agencies that sponsor the program. Their compensation is on a scale based on experience and education. The quality of the instructors is very high, and that is reflected in good student reviews. We have Ph.D.-level people teaching the math course, and people with master’s degrees teaching some others.
These are all 16-week college-credit courses, taught in the evenings, each course once a week, for three or four hours. The courses are free to anyone who signs up. The partner agencies pay Solano College. The students don’t pay for tuition or books.
Scahill:
My executive assistant, Deborah Hill, serves as registrar. She’s been magnificent working with students to make sure they understand the registration process and make sure they receive the appropriate credits. Although Central Contra Costa handles a large share of the administration, the program is a true partnership among the 14 agencies that now support it. Each semester, it’s a group decision what will be taught, where it will be taught, and who the instructors are going to be.
TPO:
Why do you feel the program has been so popular?
Scahill:
It can lead to careers with good salaries and benefits. There’s also very good job security — people are going to continue flushing no matter what happens to the economy.
Craig:
Right now everybody’s worried about losing a job. I sit in on some interviews with job candidates, and many people say one reason they’re interested in the position is job security. Once they get that job, they feel they’re going to have a career they can count on — they’re not going to be laid off every three years.
In our area, the median starting salary for a Grade 1 operator is about $4,800 a month. If they can work their way up to the journeyman level in three or four years, the pay is about $5,800 per month at low end and $7,000 at high end.
So if you are strongly interested in this industry and you come into the program and do everything we want you to do and move up, then in three or four years you can make more than $75,000 a year. That gets you into a good career at a pretty good salary in a reasonable time. Of course, California as a whole is on the high end of the pay scale. If you’re looking countrywide, at some of the smaller states and smaller cities, where the industry isn’t recognized as well, compensation will not be as good.
TPO:
Does the education program lead directly to employment with the sponsoring agencies?
Scahill:
It is not a job-placement program. The courses prepare the students to take their state certification exams in either water or wastewater operations. There is no guarantee of a job upon completion, and we make that clear on the front end.
But the students do get exposure to teachers from the sponsoring agencies, and we have certainly notified students when there are job openings. Just about all of the agencies have said they plan on hiring people in a year or two directly out of the program.
And the skills students gain through the courses easily transfer to anywhere else in the country where openings exist.
Craig:
After completing courses, the students need to complete 2,080 hours of work in a treatment plant to be eligible for certification as Grade 1 operators. Agencies can hire students directly out of the program as operators in training. That enables them to get their hours and move up. In effect, we’ve opened the orifice to allow many more opportunities for people to get into wastewater treatment.
TPO:
After two full years, how would you assess the effectiveness of the education program?
Scahill:
To date, we’ve typically seen 30 students — the maximum — starting out in every class we’ve offered. Very consistently, about 20 of those pass. We are closing in on 200 students who have completed multiple courses. We still haven’t had to advertise at all. First consideration for enrollment goes to students who have taken classes already.
The students have liked the instructors, and instructors have enjoyed what they’re doing. So far, all of them have returned to teach the classes a second and third time. At least a half-dozen of the students have already been hired by sponsoring agencies.
Craig:
The beauty of the program is that we can rotate the classes we offer into different locations to make it convenient for people in different service areas to enter the program and get through it without having to drive long distances. A lot of agencies are interested in hiring to reflect the diversity of the local population. By offering the courses locally, they can draw students from within their service areas.
Scahill:
It’s also the kind of program that agencies in other parts of the state can easily replicate by contracting with a community college that has a water and wastewater program in place.
TPO:
How does this program fit with your own staffing needs and internal training programs at Central Contra Costa?
Craig:
We will see at least three retirements in 2009 and perhaps as many as five, and we have to replace those experienced people. We used to have the luxury of hiring operators and letting them increase their knowledge and move up over time, according to their individual wishes.
Now, when we hire people, I find out upfront if they are willing to commit to a program to advance from operator in training to a journey-level operator in three to four years. It’s an aggressive training program.
Because we saw this issue coming some years ago, we created an electronic information system in which we converted all our operating manuals, training manuals, and training videos to a digital format. We have more than 300 gigabytes of information and growing. It’s all being built into a plant information system where operators sit in our training room and go online and learn.
When we hire new operators in training, they start out spending half their time viewing videos and doing other office-based study, and the other half with a shift supervisor or other high-level staff member who walks them through the processes and explains them. Then we put them on shift to work with journey-level staff to mentor on various processes. They work different shifts and in different areas of the plant.
They do that until they progress through the operator-in-training phase and become Grade 1 operators. As they become internally certified and pass all the requirements to operate equipment that’s within their state certification, we start putting them into operating stations on their own.
