Operators Across Colorado Sharpen Their Skills With Help From This Consultant

It’s hard to say where Dave Lewis finds the time to run his contract operations company.

He also organizes and conducts operator training across Colorado and squeezes in the occasional elk hunting trip. His schedule would exhaust the average person, but the constant hustle only energizes him.

After graduating from college in 2004, Lewis wanted to do something related to environmental stewardship. “Initially, I wanted to be a conservation officer,” says Lewis, president of Direct Discharge Consulting, based in Wellington. “But I quickly realized that job would interfere with my hunting seasons.”

He pivoted to wastewater operations, passing the required civil servant exam in his home state of New York, only to be placed on a waiting list: “I was No. 350 in line. I figured I’d be waiting for a while.”

Determined to get started in the industry, Lewis took a job at a mobile dewatering company that dredged lagoons and dewatered solids at municipal and industrial sites along the Eastern Seaboard. The job took him to sites as far as Florida.

Headed west

In two and a half years, he worked his way up from laborer to operations manager, learning everything he could about biosolids dewatering, centrifuge operations and equipment maintenance. In 2007, during a Colorado bow hunting trip, Lewis and friends were at a bar where he overheard locals discussing the state’s wastewater effluent regulations.

“I just sat there and listened to this guy complain about how stringent the regulations were,” he recalls. “It fascinated me.” He returned to New York only to pack his things and fly back to Denver two weeks later, determined to be closer to the world-class elk hunting and work in the Rocky Mountain water industry.

Three weeks after landing in Denver, Lewis arrived early to interview for an operator job at the Louisville Wastewater Treatment Plant. The superintendent, Ken Mason, offhandedly mentioned that the plant’s centrifuge was having some issues. Given his experience in dewatering, Lewis offered to take a look.

The two started the interview as Lewis troubleshooted the centrifuge and made some operational suggestions, after which the machine produced dry cake and clean centrate. Mason said, “Interview over. When can you start?” In four years at that facility, Lewis became chief operator and ran the industrial pretreatment program.

Seeking variety

As the years went on, Lewis operated several plants along Colorado’s Front Range, optimizing operations and organizing maintenance. But his insatiable drive left him feeling unsatisfied with operating only one plant at a time. “It gets boring,” he says. “You get a problem every couple of months, the team figures it out relatively quickly. You fix it, and everything’s good.”

When not at his day job, he hunted in the mountains and raced cars at the Colorado National Speedway. To fund those hobbies, he began moonlighting as a process control consultant and mechanic at water and wastewater treatment plants.

The same mechanical skills he used to build race cars and fix centrifuges proved valuable, and he began receiving regular calls for help from operators. “On weekends, I’d replace a pump, fix a blower or change the oil on equipment,” he says. “That was my niche. I like mechanical stuff. I have a process control brain, but I really like to turn wrenches and get dirty.”

Soon, word got out that Lewis could help solve common process control and mechanical issues. “It was cool to have people calling me up and saying, ‘Hey, I got your number from a guy who says you’re the one to talk to about this problem,’” Lewis says. “That’s when I realized that mechanical work was what I needed to do.” That “I’ll-take-a-look” attitude eventually grew into the consultancy he launched in 2016.

Expanding the business

“The name Direct Discharge came from helping plants with their industrial pretreatment programs,” Lewis says. “Smaller towns struggle to run those programs. They don’t have the staff to manage them. So, I started there.”

While his expertise was a big help to small plants, running pretreatment programs didn’t scratch his itch for hands-on work, and the focus soon shifted its focus to operations and maintenance.

“Pretreatment programs take a lot of time and energy sitting behind a computer,” says Lewis. “It made some money, but my heart wanted to help people in the field.” It started with a truck and a toolbox and answering calls for small mechanical issues and operations optimization.

As relationships grew, so did his scope of work. That led to Lewis becoming the operator in responsible charge for one of his early clients: “That was the bread and butter. That’s what kept the lights on. I can hire guys if I have guaranteed income. So, I started finding ORC contracts that enabled me to hire people.”

Direct Discharge is now the ORC for 25 water and wastewater plants from 100,000 gpd to 5 mgd. Lewis was involved in the design of half of them.

The crew has grown to 12 people with various skills. Mike Menke and Adrian Gibson focus on process controls. Justin Bodkins, Tyler Ashlaw, Sean Hott and Ben Hildreth oversee the treatment plants. Lewis’ wife, Renea, is the office administrator: “I know for a fact that without her this business and my personal success would not be possible.”

Continued growth

In the past nine years, Lewis and his team have maintained their ethos of serving the Colorado operations community. “If your plant is screwed up, we’ll go in for a couple days, sort it out and put you on a path to success,” Lewis observes. “Then we’re out the door and you just keep us updated. Send us some data; we’ll crunch it if need be.”

In 2023, Direct Discharge created a mechanical division that has grown by leaps and bounds. The group found a niche in mechanical projects too small for large and midsized contractors. It is becoming the largest contributor to the company’s business.

“We’ve probably installed 35 pumps this year so far from jockey pumps to submersible pumps and turbine pumps,” says Lewis. “We’ve done a bunch of blower and lift station retrofits.”

Apart from mechanical work and process optimization, the company fills the gaps with sewer jetting, instrumentation, work and odd jobs with clients who simply trust Lewis and his team.

Lewis says, “People call and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a plug in my sewer line.’ So we take the sewer jetter out there. That leads to, ‘Do you know anything about lining?’ Now I’m hooking them up with my lining guys. It always turns into more work because I’m just honest with them.”

Holding steady

Because Direct Discharge looks after numerous plants, the team operates a host of equipment including Gorman-Rupp and Boerger pumps, APG-Neuros blowers, SAVECO and HUBER Technology headworks screens and Trojan Technologies disinfection systems. What started as a bar conversation has unfolded into a water industry legacy. Direct Discharge is setting the bar for operations and maintenance in the Colorado water industry.

This commitment earned Lewis a William D. Hatfield Award and the 2025 Walter A. Weers Service Award for dedication to the state’s water and wastewater industry associations. “I was pleasantly surprised to win the awards,” says Lewis. “Looking at the names of the folks who have received them in the past is a lot of pressure. Now I have to live up to that expectation.”

Direct Discharge recently moved to a larger location to accommodate its business, giving Lewis the home base to do just that. While still fitting in some hunting trips, of course.