Orlando Lee never pictured himself as an author. In his work life, he’s a certified operator at the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, a 150-acre facility with a design capacity of 370 mgd, owned by the DC Water and Sewer Authority in the nation’s capital.
Still, earlier this year, Lee made a contribution to the lore and literature of his profession by self-publishing a children’s book, Where’s the Fish?
llustrated by DeMeria SeGuan and published by Xlibris, the book contains a simple but powerful lesson: that life depends on clean water, and without wastewater treatment, we wouldn’t have it.
“My goal,” Lee said in a note to Treatment Plant Operator, sent with a copy of the book, “is to show the public how important our work is.” His story follows two children, Toni and Jason, on a fishing trip with their grandfather to his favorite stream. They find the water choked by algae, they catch nothing, and the kids are left wondering what happened to the fish.
They tell their father what happened. The next day, he takes them back to the stream and explains how the water became polluted. He tells them how wastewater treatment plants take out the harmful nutrients that cause algae to grow, then takes them to another stream protected by a treatment plant. Here, they catch a stringer of fish that, on the way home, they proudly show off to their grandparents.
Creating the book was a big challenge, but Lee is glad he expended the effort, and money, to make it happen. He talked about the project in an interview with TPO.
TPO:
What’s your background in the wastewater treatment profession?
Lee:
After I finished high school in Washington, D.C., I worked as an operator trainee at Mattawoman in Charles County, Md. While I was there, I took wastewater courses at the Maryland Center for Environmental Training. I currently hold a 5A certification. Level 5 is the highest license level in the state of Maryland, and the A is for advanced treatment.
After I attained my 5A, I went to work for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, at their Western Branch plant in Upper Marlborough, Md. When I left there in 1999, I went to Blue Plains as a certified operator, and I worked my way up to wastewater foreman.
In 2006, I decided I wanted to do something a little different — wastewater is different everywhere. So, I moved to the Atlanta area and worked as a foreman at the Snapfinger Wastewater Treatment Plant in DeKalb County. In 2008, I came back to Blue Plains as an operator.
TPO:
How did you get the idea to create this book?
Lee:
It was a spring day in 2006, and I was in the car with my daughter, Toni, and my godson, Jason. There’s a major highway, I-295, that goes right past Blue Plains. Every time people drive by, they smell the plant — although that situation has improved with a new odor-control system.
As we drove past that day, Toni and Jason had the same reaction as many other people: “It stinks.” When they said that, I tried to figure out a way to explain the good that wastewater treatment actually does.
I didn’t want to get too technical. When you talk to people who aren’t in the field, it’s hard to avoid being technical. When you’re talking to children, you really can’t get technical. So, I tried to explain it that day in the best way I could.
It stayed on my mind when I came home and when I went back to work the next day. That’s when I said, “The best way to reach children is through a story — something they can easily relate to.” One of the basic things we do is clean the water for aquatic life and recreational use. That’s when I came up with the idea: Let’s show how wastewater treatment makes it better for the fish, and if you don’t have wastewater treatment, what could possibly happen. That’s when the story started coming together.
TPO:
Do Toni and Jason in the book represent your daughter and godson?
Lee:
Yes. I named the characters after them because they were the ones who gave me the idea.
TPO:
Had you ever taken on a writing project before?
Lee:
No. I’ve never been a writer, but this was just something I wanted to do. I looked at other books to see how the patterns of the stories went along. In high school, I took English literature, so I had an idea how to set up the story.
I sat down and wrote it on a sheet of scratch paper. I went step by step to make sure I didn’t jump from one place to another, making sure I had a beginning, a middle, and an end. The middle is basically about what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. The end of the story shows the end product — the good things that happen when people in our profession do our jobs well.
TPO:
What was the most challenging part of the project?
Lee:
The hardest part of the book was that I can’t draw. I had to find a way to get the drawings done. While living in the Atlanta area, I got up one morning, and they were having a street festival in my town. That day I was just about to give up the whole idea and say, “I’m not going to get this done.”
But I happened to go to the street festival, and I walked past one of the vendors who did jewelry and some drawings — that was DeMeria SeGuan. I stopped and told her what I wanted to do. She gave me her card and told me to call her and we could sit down and see what she could do for me.
Later on, we met, and I gave her the manuscript with my ideas for certain pictures on each page. She drew me a few pictures and said, “Is this what you want?” I said, “Yeah.” We went on from there, and we finished it.
TPO:
How did you go about finding a publisher?
Lee:
I had looked at one publishing company, but it was really expensive, and I didn’t have that kind of money. Then an aunt of mine heard a radio program about self-publishing companies, and she told me to go to a certain Web site. I went there, and it brought up a whole list of publishers.
I looked at a couple of them and got information by mail or from the computer about self-publishing and how much it cost. I picked Xlibris because it seemed they could get the work done professionally, and they offered a payment plan that I could afford.
TPO:
How many copies did you order at first?
Lee:
Originally, I had 20 copies printed. It’s a print-on-demand system, where if someone calls and orders a copy, they can just print it out. I’ve just started getting into the marketing aspect.
At first, it really wasn’t about marketing. It was more of a project just to show the kids. But a lot of people who read the book liked it. So, I started sending copies to certain places just to see if I could get a little publicity. I sent it to the Water Environment Federation and the EPA. I’ve also drawn a little interest from the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, and some people I work with at the DC Water and Sewer Authority.
I’m now sending it to certain water utilities to let them see what it’s about. If I can get just a little mention, it might go a long way toward getting other plants interested.
TPO:
What do you see as the real benefit of this book?
Lee:
It’s helping to make the public aware of the good we do as wastewater treatment operators, engineers, supervisors, maintenance staff, everyone. I know there are a lot of people in this profession who, when their kids ask, “What do you do?” have a hard time explaining it to them.
If you say, “I’m in the lab, I’m running tests,” they say, “Well, what are you testing for?” You say, “I’m getting a pH or a DO,” and to you that makes sense because you’ve been doing it for so long. But your kids are saying, “What’s DO?” With children, it might just go in one ear and out the other.
What’s the easy way to explain it? A children’s story with just enough wastewater so that it doesn’t blow off their heads — just enough so that they can follow it and actually look at a treatment plant and see the good it does.
The book is something wastewater operators can let their kids read or they can read to their children so they understand what Mommy or Daddy does when working at the treatment plant.
TPO:
How have people responded to the book so far?
Lee:
People seem to love the story line and pictures. I have a few people at the Blue Plains plant who actually called the publisher and ordered the book. I showed the proofs to management before the finished book was done. They really liked it. Of course, my kids love it. My godson actually took it to school, and they loved it.
TPO:
Do you have any other projects in the works?
Lee:
If you enjoyed this book, look for another in early 2010 called Where’s the Corn? That one deals with biosolids and how they can help agriculture. The plot behind it is that the children visit an uncle who is having problems raising his crop. He’s tried everything. The suggestion is that maybe he can use biosolids.
