Howdy y’all,
A friend suggested that one of my posts needs to be about a
normal day for an water treatment operations professional. So, with that, let
me share a little about what the normal water treatment operator does in his or
her day. And yes, I said her. I have had
the pleasure of working with several female operators before, and without a
doubt, they were some of the most competent operators I have ever known.
Once you arrive at your duty assignment, be that a surface
water plant or groundwater pumping station or even the company shop, the first
thing that you have to do is check in on what fell apart the night before. Now
generally it will not be anything too terrible, but the normal fare of problems
will mostly be telemetry system related or pump related. Occasionally there
will be some calls from concerned citizens at 2 or 3 am wanting to know all about
their water quality, those are sure to be fun call backs.
If you and your utility are lucky, nothing went sideways in
the night, so it’s time to grab a cup of coffee or something similar and check
out the work orders for the day.
Work orders are both a blessing and curse. They are great for documenting what you do,
but they are such pains in the butt when it comes to filing them. All utilities
however demand work orders and tracking on them. It is the one main way that a
utility shows its work effort, and indeed its needs during budget season. In
the bad old days, our work orders were just print outs, but as technology has
evolved and the role of the operator has become more and more infused with
technology, the paper gave way to the computer or tablet.
Now that you have your work orders you can head out to get
started on them. Your coworker will
start running the first of the shift samples on the water. First however, the
process control lab equipment all has to be calibrated, and those results
logged. Any equipment not functioning
properly must first be repaired or replaced before any samples can be run. In general, an operator will spend about 45
minutes of the first hour grabbing samples and running process control analysis
along with state and federal analysis.
While you are running analysis on the water, someone else
will be filling up the “day” tanks for the shift. These day tanks hold the allotment of
chemicals that are expected to be used for the shift. Bulk chemicals are pumped
or fed into these day tanks, where the amount added can be carefully measured
to accurately count the chemical usage. In newer plants, these day tanks may be
designed out, and instead computers monitor the feeding rates of the chemicals
and record and report those to the operator constantly.
So now that you have managed to get your hands wet and
bogged down in paperwork you get to go back and record all this data. As soon
as you get that done, it’s time to get samples collected for the laboratory.
Now, depending where you are, and what water you are treating there could be
gallons of water to be collected from different locations around the plant. If you work at a surface water plant, there
will be more testing than that needed for groundwater only sources.
In many utilities, the plant operators also act as the radio
dispatchers and phone operators. You will receive calls by phone for
complaints, water leaks, cats up tree’s, neighbors who hate each other and want
you to do something about it. Honestly, the list of odd and bizarre calls never
ends. Once I had a customer called the utility I worked for. She was terribly
upset that the water was too cold. Someone had given her the impression that we
would warm her water up for her before it got to her home. Needless to say that
was 30 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. All is well that ends well
though, as the old saying goes.
From here you have samples every hour that must be taken for
process control if you are in a surface water plant. That takes about 15 to 20
minutes each time. In between those
samples, the filters need to be washed and cleaned. These filters trap all the
bad stuff in the water like cryptosporidium or giardia. Those filters can run from a day or two up to
maybe a week just depending on the water and the flow rate through each
filter. The way the world works however,
you end up with 3 or 4 filters to wash on a normal shift. That process takes
over an hour when you are a junior operator. By the time you have seasoned out,
you can do it in 30 to 40 minutes, while dispatching calls on the radio and
eating your lunch because you don’t actually get a scheduled time for that in
most cases.
What you find is the job in many cases is routine. Things
happen at specific times for specific reasons. You start or stop pumps to keep
the system full. You work with maintenance staff to clean up the site on your
free time. Take out the trash. Clean the bathrooms. You name it, you must do
it.
As the shift starts to come to an end, you will most likely
see the next shift of operators about 15 to 30 minutes before their scheduled
time to start. In large facilities, this is the “pass on” period. Where the
shift about to go off explains what they have done, what problems they had etc.
to the shift about to come on duty. Logbooks are transferred, as are keys,
radios all the tools of the trade.
Then finally that magic time rolls around, and you can punch
out for the shift. Sadly, you will probably be back in 8 hours. As the years go
by it has become harder and harder to keep utilities fully staffed. Staff will
commonly work 8 to 16 hours a week of overtime to fill shortages in staff. The
truth is that its not glamorous work. You will not be a social media influencer
showing off pictures of you taking water samples. You will not get rich. You
will miss many holidays, birthdays, and precious family moments because you are
on shift or responding to an emergency call out.
Truly, very few folks know how much goes into making that
water flow out their tap at any given time, and even fewer care. That is until
the water isn’t flowing, then suddenly it’s a crisis of epic proportions. Over
worked and under appreciated are the hallmarks of being a water treatment
professional these days.
Until next time…
