Data increasingly guides water and wastewater treatment operating decisions. Numbers replace sight, sound, smell and dosing-and-retention-time guidance handed down from old-timers. Plants and distribution and collections systems substitute calculations and facts for guesses and gut feelings.
A case in point is Louisville, Colorado, which has two water treatment plants and eight full-time operators for its population of 20,000-plus. The city, between Denver and Boulder, was founded as a coal mining town in the late 1870s. It became a bedroom suburb in the 1950s when the coal played out and the need for living space continued to grow.
Louisville’s Sid Copeland Water
