r/Wastewater

I’ve spent the last several months talking with people across the water industry, and a theme keeps surfacing around how utilities communicate and coordinate outside of their own organizations.
We’re exploring a theory around improving visibility and trust between utilities and the organizations making long-term infrastructure and growth decisions.
I’m deliberately keeping the theory broad here, but we’re at the point where we need utility professionals to challenge it.

I’d actually love to hear why we’re wrong or why this wouldn’t work.

Specifically looking to connect with utility executives and professionals involved in planning, capacity, engineering, or external coordination.
If that’s you and you’re willing to give me 15 minutes to poke holes in what we’re exploring, comment or DM me.

I just posted about an issue with our Hach Cl17sc with a sc200 controller but after several frustrating days i finnaly fixed the issue but now we have a new one

Info about our plant: small rural city drinking water plant (package plant), only operate for about 16hours a day. The problem meter in question is used to monitor our finished water's free chlorine. The cell light is operating at 38%, buffer and indicator were replaced on the 1st of July, Tubing was replaced less than a week ago, faulty gasket replaced and cell was cleaned yesterday, software appears to be up to date with Hach website.

But this is the situation.

Yesterday i got off shift after fixing the meter and all was fine with it until the night shift shut the plant down for the night and after that the reading has been going from 0.00 to 8.00+ with every other read cycle, continuing even after the plant was started back up this morning and through to now at the time of posting this. it seems to be dispensing everything appropriately and when provided a grab sample it measures it with relative accuracy and after calibrating it several times i can not for the life of me figure out what it is doing and how to fix it, I've tried turning it off and back on, calibrating, cleaning the cell, priming, and I've got nothing else i can think to do other than have the techs come out and mess with again but they've proven to not be the best at solving these issues let alone quickly.

Any ideas why it would do this and how to fix it? I'm so confused.

Update: Well after leaving the analyzer to do its thing for several hours it is no longer jumping between 0.00 and 8.00+ But it refuses to go below 2.30 despite the water it is analyzing coming back in the 1.10 - 1.40 each time we tested it. And after attempting to calibrate it it refuses to read the standard above 0.00 and the one time it did it came back at 5.68 and it said to slope out of range recalibrate (or something similar) and i have given up on messing with it until i know more or have a concrete solution. If something changes i will update again but for now that is all i have.

Wastewater-curious in Oregon. Sorry if this is a dumb question but do you have to take steps to make sure the plant smells stay at the plant when you clock out each day?

Happy 4th! I am a drinking water operator and just had a call in for a main break, fortunately for me we have a distribution crew that handles that but unfortunately for them they work M-F so I know they’re going to be thrilled.

I’m in my early 30s, so I don’t quite clearly remember a time before cell phones and definitely most of my adult life most people have always had a cell phone.

That call made me start wondering what the expectation was for on call prior to cell phones, I know there was pagers, and even home phones, but I would think that would be easy enough to just say “oh sorry I didn’t see it” or “oh I was at the grocery store so didn’t hear the home phone ring”. Where now there’s a general expectation of having the on call phone near you at all times.

Were you on your own if something happened? Did you have to sit near the pager/not leave your house all day? I’m bored on a weekend and am just curious lol

A few months I got an interview for wastewater collections trainee position. I think the interview went fine, but I didn’t make it to the second round.

I called backed and one of the interviewers said I did nothing wrong and other people had certifications.

2 months later, the wastewater district unexpectedly announced 2 trainee positions. I did my best with the limited time I had. I didn’t have time to get my certifications. However, I got OSHA 10 in Construction & General Industry, 2 introductory safety classes, and completed a 36-hour course to qualify for the T2/D2 exams.

A couple days ago, I got a rejection email. I was not expecting to get the job. But now I feel down because I improved resume with a worse outcome.

Hey, to give a little background im 20 and moved out of home and cut contact with my family when i was 18. After about a year i ended up loosing my job and ended up homeless. It took a long time but im slowly getting back on my feet mentally and physically and im now in a place where i can start thinking about a career long term again. In the duration i was homeless i was also attending college full time and struggled to apply myself due to my living circumstances and mental health struggles, and dont know if it’s really the right option for me at the moment. I currently live in San Jose, California.

I learned about wastewater + water treatment a couple days ago and i’m really interested in it. On this reddit I’m getting some mixed information on whether or not i can get into a trainee position with zero experience or not and how hard it’ll be to get my foot in the door. There were a handful of people who did get a position with a retail background like myself though. I wanted to know if you guys being experienced in the field have any advice and could answer a couple questions?

Is it realistic for me to get in with zero experience?

What should I do to position myself to be a better candidate for a trainee position?

What kind of person is needed to work in this field/Who would not work well in this line of work.

Are there any other career paths i should look into?

Do you have any advice for someone like me?

What can i do to set myself up for success?

How are the schedules?

Is this something that i can sustainably do for the rest of my life?

Thank you in advance if you’re able to help me out at all and if you have any other advice or guidance im open ears.

Brewer here looking to make the jump into the field. Over at r/TheBrewery this career is a very popular place to land after leaving the brewing industry; lots of similar skills apparently. Just looking to see how you guys liked the switch.

I live in Sputhern California and im currently looking for a job. I just graduated from AIT as a water treatment specialist but I know water treatment in the army is alot different from water treatment in the civilian life. I would love to get some guidance on how I can get a job related to my MOS, im looking around and alot of these jobs require at least 2 years experience (which i dont have) and specific certifications that I do not possess. I feel like I chose the wrong mos.

Or am I just scratching the surface

Any tips for working overtime , I am about to start in a couple days.

So we had to turn off the water to a known meth den due to non payment the other day and woke up this morning to 2 different water lines cut over night. Lost 1/3d of the tank which is perfect timing since 4th of july has a good chance for a fire. They're cutting the lines on the customer side at the meter with a sawsall and our system is so naff we have to go looking for it. So far the cops aren't doing jack shit as usual.

Frustrating. i'm working the weekend and normally we get full by 1-2 in the afternoon since we pull water from a creek that's super clean this time of year (different story in the winter). So i'll probably be on and miss 4th stuff. We've got fences and cameras at the plant but It wouldn't surprise me if they fuck with the plant itself.

I wish they'd dirt nap each other to be honest. GRRRR

edit: you wastewater folk are probably mostly immune to this since even a meth head doesn't want to sawsall a live sewer line I'd guess ;)

I have an offer letter for and OIT position in California. However, they are only offering $26.90 an hour. The job description showed $26 - $33 per hour based on skills, certifications and year of experience. My current job has similar skills related to this position and I have 6 years of experience there and I currently make $33 an hour.

I have also recently earned current certifications from Office of Water Programs California at State University, Sacramento. Certificate for OWTP1-A Safety, Beginning Treatment, and Lagoon Systems, Volume 1, 8th Ed. and certificate for OWTP1-B Secondary Treatment, Volume 1, 8th Ed.

I'd like to negotiate for a higher starting wage, as a $6 pay cut is quite brutal. Any recommendations on how to go about this? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!.

Howdy yall, this question is for my water plant operators who also have plate settlers in their sedimentation basins.

Algae. We’ve just put our new basin in with 4 stage flocculation and plate settlers at the end of our basin. We’ve been running about 12MGD through this basin until our governing body approves our exception to run 21MGD. The basin has been in about a month now, and within that month we have had a good bit of algae growth on the settles themselves on the very top. I’m assuming this is going to start causing some flow issues or, with the increased flow, settled and filtered turbidity issues with the algae being forced out and into the filters.

For those that have plate settlers, have you experienced this as well? What have you done to combat the algae growth? Thanks all!

Hey fellow turd herders! Western Canadian here, Ive been in the game for almost 20 years, 16 of which were in the private sector then made the switch to municipal. Each has their pros and cons right? As much as Im enjoying municipal (run both Lvl 4 WTP and WWTP) our city recently cut all the overtime and made scheduling changes to where Im out 30k going into this year. I have aspirations of starting my own business but need capital and was looking into FIFO (fly in, fly out) jobs to hopefully make more money in the mean time. Curious if anyone here does this type of work, mostly mines and camps from what Ive seen and how much can you realistically make?

Hey guys,

I'm a civil engineer by trade but I've been getting heavily into goldfish keeping lately. Naturally, my professional background kicked in and made me want to design the filter like a mini water treatment plant. I don't have any formal training in microbiology or aquaculture—everything I know comes from self-studying research papers—so I'm pretty sure I've either overengineered something or completely misunderstood the biology here.

The system has been running for about 6 months now, so it should be matured, but I keep hitting the same walls.

To give you the physical breakdown: It's a small 60x40x40cm glass tank (around 96 Liters / 25 Gallons). The flow rate is quite high, running a 1200 L/h pump which gives it roughly a 12.5x hourly turnover rate. Water gets pumped down near the bottom of a DIY PVC settling pipe (90mm OD, 1.3m tall), flows upward through spiral brushes and filter floss, exits through a mechanical filter sock, and then flows into an overhead baffled sump (80x15x15cm) packed with lava rock biomedia before returning via a DIY venturi. Because I'm heavy feeding the fish right now, I flush the sludge from the settling pipe every 2 days and do water changes twice a week. Tap water pH is around 7.5.

On the bacterial side, I’ve been dosing a specific cocktail based on what I read. I use a heterotrophic Bacillus blend (subtilis, licheniformis, polymyxa, megaterium), some generic commercial autotrophs (AOB/NOB) from a Chinese brand, and Paracoccus pantotrophus. My underlying theory with the tall settling pipe was to let a thin sludge blanket form at the bottom to act as a mild anoxic zone, hopefully triggering denitrification via B. licheniformis.

But here is where things are going wrong and I need a sanity check:

First, I have a persistent nitrite bottleneck. Ammonia is almost always at a solid 0 mg/L, but Nitrite (NO2) constantly hovers around 0.2 mg/L. It will randomly drop to near 0 for a short bit, then bounce right back up. At the 6-month mark, why are the NOB struggling so much to catch up? Is my 12.5x turnover rate simply too fast for them to colonize the media properly?

Second, my pH is crashing violently. It refuses to stay stable at 7.0, dropping rapidly from the tap's 7.5. I'm constantly adding baking soda to boost alkalinity and buffer it back up. Concurrently, my filter socks and floss clog insanely fast with a thick, yellowish-brown biofilm. I know autotrophic nitrification consumes alkalinity, but could these Bacillus heterotrophs be hyperactive, hogging the oxygen/space and compounding the pH crash? Or am I missing a different chemical reaction here?

Lastly, I'm confused about Paracoccus pantotrophus. I bought it because literature says it’s capable of Heterotrophic Nitrification-Aerobic Denitrification (HN-AD) simultaneously under aerobic conditions. However, the actual product label only claims it eliminates Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) and mentions nothing about nitrogen. Did I fall into a strain-specific trap, or did I totally misapply this bacteria for an aquarium context?

Would love to hear some thoughts from the microbiology or wastewater crowd here. Where is my logic failing?

Thanks in advance!

Hi all,

I'm a non-licensed operator (looking to take the exam in 4 months) and when I first came into this field, I thought it would be a fulfilling career. I was dead wrong. I've been here for a year now and I cannot stand the demeaning, daily monotonous tasks and the boredom has been really negatively impacting my mental health.

I originally came from fish/wildlife work but due to the tough competition for higher pay and permanent positions, I decided to pivot into wastewater after 5 years in that field. I was honestly overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge being an operator required but at about the 6 month mark I've hit a wall where I've pretty much learned everything I need to know but barely use a fraction of it.

I'm more of a project oriented person and I the whole point of being an operator is to make sure the same exact thing happens day in and day out. There is no experimentation or decision making besides some simple troubleshooting (tell maintenance shit's broke). It's so repetitive and most of my time is spent on my phone because there is literally only about 3hrs of actual work to be done. It also doesn't help that I'm just an operator and we have our own maintenance crew so the amount of things I'm allowed to do is restricted.

I feel like it was a mistake coming into this role and although I do appreciate the field for what it is, I just do not feel fulfillment. The reason I haven't jumped ship is because the benefits are so great. I'm kind of at a stand still with my life where I need to either decide to find better opportunities for my mental health or stay and be financially secure later in life (pension) with a moderate amount of time off.

Does anybody have any advice like where I could go from here? Ideally I'd like to stay in the environmental field but dont know where my operating experience could take me. It seems alot of the mind-stimulating roles are for enginners, but I only have an environmental biology degree. I've also considered a lab, but they don't make enough to live considering the salaries I've seen. I wouldn't mind staying as an operator if the job actually felt fulfilling. Do I just cope and watch the clock every day until I receive my pension?