Years ago I took a business trip to New York, and that triggered a complaint from my wife about all the wonderful places I got to visit without her.
I patiently explained that on this particular overnight, in-and-out trip, I would see nothing except an airport, a hotel room and the Edward P. Decher Secondary Wastewater Treatment Facility in Elizabeth, N.J., across the Goethals bridge from Staten Island. There, I would do research for a magazine story about the plant’s digester gas-fueled cogeneration system.
Few people would consider that a glamorous assignment. It turned out to be a miserably hot summer day, and the road to the plant took me deep into an industrial area, about as unglamorous a spot as one could find. Yet 23 years later, I remember that visit fondly. Why? Because of Robert Nichol, then plant superintendent, and his staff, who made me feel completely welcome.
They gave me all the time I needed, describing their cogen process in detail and answering any question I cared to ask. Their pride showed everywhere, from the immaculate interior of the engine room, to the tiny but manicured piece of lawn and the flowers in planters near the office front door.
It’s the rule
That has been the rule, not the exception, in my visits to treatment plants around the country. The experience is the same when I interview plant managers and operators by telephone. They always seem eager to talk about their plant; I never feel as if I’m being subtly rushed off the phone so they can get on with their day.
It’s hard to imagine a profession in which the general public’s perception of its people lands so far from reality. The picture of a treatment operator in the average person’s mind is of someone with a soiled shirt who has a dirty job that no one else wants and isn’t altogether thrilled to be where he or she is.
The picture I see is of people with considerable education and training and with highly specialized knowledge of complex processes; of people with skills that are rare and hard to replace; of people who know they’re doing something important and can hardly wait to get to work in the morning.
For this month’s issue, I had the pleasure of interviewing John Hricko, plant manager in the Town of Crewe, Va., and Butch Green, district manager for the Frisco Sanitation District in Frisco, Colo. Both fit my picture perfectly. Both also work in small communities, but the thing is, the size of the commu-nity or plant doesn’t seem to matter — the egos don’t inflate along with the population served or the daily design flow.
Always innovating
Another thing that’s striking about treatment plant people is how much they care about performance and efficiency, and how ingenious they are at solving problems and making improvements on their own for a fraction of what it would otherwise cost. Anyone who thinks public employees aren’t good stewards of tax dollars should visit with the managers and operators we profile on these pages.
At the Edward P. Decher plant, Nichol talked proudly about a new engine control system that was cutting fuel consumption by 5 to 7 percent. Hricko and his staff designed a nitrogen-reduction solution that cost $10,000 in place of the $250,000 system proposed by consulting engineers.
At Frisco, Green and his staff, among many other things, solved an odor-control problem that engineers said would cost $850,000 — at a price tag of a few hundred, with nothing more than a creative rerouting of piping.
It seems people at every plant behave that way. Far from the stereotype of shovel-leaning public employees who do the bare minimum, these folks seem to do the absolute maximum with the resources they’re given. And that means not just holding down costs but taking measures to beat permit requirements consistently.
Easy to like
All that aside, it’s simply hard not to like these people. Maybe it’s a matter of personalities and shared interests — for example, many operators enjoy the outdoors and fishing, as I do. Or maybe it’s just a genuineness that goes withworking in a profession that by its very nature keeps a person humble.
At any rate, when after an interview an operator says to “be sure and pay us a visit sometime,” I get the distinct impression he or she means it. And since Butch Green and his team work in the middle of the Rockies next to a big lake that’s full of trout, maybe I’ll test that theory on him someday.
I think I could get my wife to go along to a place like that.
