Halloween and wastewater treatment. There doesn’t seem to be much connection — until you think about it a little.

For one, all kinds of scary things can happen at clean-water plants if home and business owners dump or flush things they shouldn’t — like fryer grease and baby wipes. And imagine the scary things that would happen if the plant were not there — cholera, dysentery, filthy water, dead fish, horrible smells.

The team at the Dry Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, operated by Sanitary District No. 1 (SD1) in Villa Hills, Ky., aimed to get those messages across to its public with special Halloween tours last October. Joe Baxter, manager of the 33 mgd (average flow) plant, noted, “We wanted a creative way to get important information out to the customers about wastewater treatment and what is all involved. We wanted to do it in a fun and interactive way.”

Props and decorations, including cobwebs draping the newly updated laboratory, created a Halloween atmosphere as visitors viewed various plant processes. Baxter led the tours along with Sarah Griffiths, pretreatment manager; John Clark, director of operations; and a retired district employee. Kids received “Trick or Treatment” goodie bags.

“People in this industry are always looking for a positive way to get the message out to the general public,” says Baxter. “This seems like a really good venue to do that. You can never be too creative to get people to come into your facility because that’s sometimes the best way to educate. They come in and see a nice, clean facility run by professionals, and it just makes the experience that much better.”

It’s the kind of event that helps further the aims of the Fire Chief Project:

• Raise clean-water operators to the stature of the fire chief
• Make kids grow up wanting to be clean-water operators

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