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Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
Perspectives on Aging Infrastructure
Mike Saunders joins us for another engaging discussion. This time, the conversation explores the concept of aging infrastructure in the wastewater industry. It discusses the two main aspects of aging infrastructure: deteriorating functionality and becoming obsolete.
The timeline for infrastructure to be considered aging varies, with some systems losing functionality as early as 10 years. Not surprisingly, the problem of aging infrastructure is significant, with thousands of sewer overflows reported and billions of dollars spent on repairs and maintenance.
The conversation highlights the need for regulatory oversight, proper maintenance, and funding to address the challenges of aging infrastructure. We also cover various aspects of wastewater systems and infrastructure. The principal themes include the importance of inflow and infiltration (I&I), neglect of the collection system and pretreatment, monitoring and troubleshooting beyond the end of the pipe, scheduled plant expansions, the need for sustainability and optimization in engineering, and personal motivation to make a meaningful impact.
If you have comments or questions about our podcast, you can reach us through this link. To discuss a project or talk to one of our engineers, call 800-348-9843.
Angela
Hello and thanks for joining us again. Today we're gonna talk about aging infrastructure. So it's a term that you may have heard in the news. They're talking about it a lot in the legislature. And we wanted to come in and talk about what it means in our industry. What does it mean when we're talking about wastewater? So...
Today I'm joined by Shawn as always here to keep us in line and make sure that we say appropriate things. And today Mike is joining us. So Mike has been on the podcast before. You may have heard him speak in a variety of locations. He was recently on another podcast that was published also. He actually leads our sales efforts.
for commercial and municipal systems. So, hi Mike.
Mike
Hello Angela, hello Shawn.
Angela
So, we're talking about our aging infrastructure and what that means and how we handle it. So let's kick it off. So Mike, so when someone refers to aging infrastructure, what does that mean to you?
Mike
Well, I think what most people think it is, is deterioration. I mean, kind of like your car, right? Your car is aging and it deteriorates, and eventually it reaches a point where it's really not drivable. But along that route, tires are wearing out and oils needs to be changed and brakes wear out. So that's one definition is deteriorating infrastructure that eventually reaches the end of its usable life. The other one though that people don't think about is,
Mike
that it's becoming obsolete. And I guess what I would throw that into the bucket as well is we're living in a world where certainly the awareness of what we put into the environment is increasing, which necessitates new regulations. And you can have a plant that's not beyond its usable life that actually becomes obsolete because it doesn't meet current requirements or need significant upgrades to meet those.
Angela
So, yeah, so let's define those two really quick. So deteriorating or losing its functionality. So why don't you describe what happens in a wastewater system that's losing its functionality?
Mike
Yeah, sure. I mean, so at the nutshell, if we actually kind of describe what a wastewater system is supposed to do, it's a couple of things. I always say the easiest way I look at it is protecting the environment from wastewater and keeping the environment out of the wastewater. And so if you're protecting the environment from wastewater, that means that you're collecting it and keeping the wastewater within a system.
And at the end of the pipe somewhere, you're treating it before you put it back in the environment and you're not causing any detrimental effects. And in the perfect world, we want a functional system, not only in day one, but year 75. And I think it's really interesting to me because if you read a lot of documents, they'll say,
Mike
the functionality of a wastewater system is 50 years, 75 years, 100 years. And I've always kind of disagreed with that because I've never seen a system that's 50 years, 75 years, 100 years, that truly meets the function I just described. I mean, it's actually allowed to degrade. And it's acceptable.
Angela
Yeah. So what, yeah. So what about obsoletion?
Mike
So that is becoming more and more common. When you think about something becoming obsolete again, it's inferior technology today that 30 years ago was the norm, but today as we have more advanced technology at our disposal and regulations get more restrictive, that old technology doesn't work. And I guess the one that jumps out at me would be a plant, let's say it's a lagoon system in
Mike
whatever state. And a lagoon is pretty simple. It can be a facultative lagoon, an aerated lagoon, and it does basic wastewater treatment. It's very conducive to rural communities. Let's say that discharges into a river that's stressed for nutrients, phosphorus or ammonia or nitrogen, and they write a new permit saying, guess what, lagoon, you now have a ammonia limit of one and total nitrogen limit of ten.
That system is obsolete. It's still functionally okay. It still, there's nothing wrong with it. The liner's good, everything that was designed works, but guess what? That system's not capable of meeting the regulations today and there's a lot of technology that can. So now you're prematurely getting rid of that system or having to replace it or update it way before the end of its usable life.
Angela
So how long does it take for infrastructure to be called aging infrastructure? What's the timeline for that?
Mike
So I think I already set the table for this. It's such an interesting question now, because like I said, you can go and you can Google this and Google aging infrastructure, you're going to see 50 or 75 years, 100 years.
Angela
Right, right. You hear the terms a lot. Like those timelines.
Mike
But the reality is, and I've seen this firsthand, is that systems can lose functionality way, way earlier than that. I mean, or it could be obsolete way earlier than that. And I would say...
Mike
that period can be as little as 10 years. I mean, it's so, so I don't think, I guess the other way to look at it too is, let's say that you think that a gravity sewer system is gonna last 50 years. What people don't, I think, really take into consideration is that the route to 50 years allows for pipes to crack underground. That's okay, it's out of sight, out of mind. And those pipes don't get fixed until the pipes.
Mike
get bad enough that it justifies actually doing a repair. And so along that route, it's allowed to degrade and it's not functional by that term that I told you at the beginning, that it's actually lost some level of functionality. It's kind of almost like driving your car on bald, I mean, I'll keep going back to the car analogy. It's kind of like allowing yourself to drive your car on bald tires. It still works, but it's not fully functional. And certainly…
Angela
So 10 years, yeah, 10 years doesn't sound very good though.
Shawn
It's only a matter of time.
Mike
Well, I mean, but you're right, that sounds horrible. And the reason I throw that number out there is there's a lot of great systems that don't get proper maintenance, preventative maintenance, proper oversight, and or it's outside its design parameters. And if it's not operated properly or operated within, even in our case, what we require as a manufacturer.
You can see those systems certainly reach the end of their usable life way, way premature.
Angela
You want to give us an example?
Mike
Yeah, I mean, so let's say you design a wastewater plant, a developer comes in and says, hey, I've got this service area. It's got 50 homes. I've got five restaurants, some more commercial buildings. And throws it to the engineer and the engineer puts it all together and says, okay, we're going to design a plant for X amount of gallons. We're assuming the wastewater strength is this.
Mike
We're also going to assume that all those restaurants, you know, handle their grease, they don't discharge the system. And great, they go out and build all this. And for the first year or two, it works great. And then the restaurants stop cleaning their grease traps. Or maybe they didn't even put in proper grease traps. Maybe five more restaurants get built instead of more houses. And you come back in five years and you start to realize this, hey, this plant's still out in its limits hydraulically, but...
it's being overloaded with grease, being overloaded biologically. Well, when you report it, it just looks like the plant isn't, you know, it's busting, not meeting its, its treatment goals. Then let's say the regular hasn't, doesn't have a permit to collect that data, so nobody's aware that it's getting hammered with more BOD or more grease and it starts to fail. And then by year 10, nobody's done anything. The plant is, is not,
Mike
isn't meeting its requirements all the time. And essentially, in the eyes of most people, it's aged to the point where it's not functional.
Angela
Mm-hmm.
Mike
Unfortunately, there was things that could have been done at year five to correct that and make it reach its usable life. And this is something that happens all over small communities across the United States.
Angela
I was just going to say this. It's not something that, or it is something that we see frequently. Yeah.
Mike
Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, and unfortunately the process is, I mean, we see it where it's okay, you get this call at year 10 and they're going, wait, what's going on? This isn't meeting its ammonia requirement. And then the first thing we do is say, okay, what data do you have? And they send us some data and all it has is what's coming out the end of the plant. Nothing coming in, no gallonage, no, you know, might have a BOD, they're not measuring fat, so it wasn't greased, so we start asking a lot of questions and we go, okay, so.
Mike
What happened in the last five years? What have you done? Any maintenance? Oh, are we supposed to do maintenance? Yeah, yeah, you're supposed to do maintenance. Here's the list of stuff you should have been. Yeah, and then we.
Angela
Yeah, yeah. Or they added a restaurant, right? Adding a restaurant, adding facilities.
Mike
Right, and then so then we say, okay, go and pull some more samples and we get back these samples and it's like twice what the design parameter was. So then at least the next one is like, okay, what changed? Oh, there was a big barbecue restaurant with 400 seats that got built. You think that could cause a problem? I said, yeah, that could cause. And then we start checking and it's outside the design parameters and...
Mike
And the reality is, is before they signed up that restaurant, somebody should have looked at it and said, Hey, before you build, we unfortunately got to do a little modification or you got to do some pretreatment or, and you know, that, that is the, and then when I say, when I say premature aging, that is, that's an example.
Angela
So are there any systems that will actually last 100 years?
Mike
Yeah, I mean, it goes back. There's, there's a lot of systems out there that, that are a hundred years old. They're all over. I mean, we still, we still have water mains that they find once in a while. They're made out of wood stave pipe. I mean, so reality, yeah, there's systems. Now, if we revisit the idea of functionality, there's a hundred year old system functional. Well, if your definition of functional is that it allows some, some water to go through it, it's functional.
Mike
But if your goal is, like I said at the beginning, and it probably should be, if your goal is to keep all wastewater out of the environment, make sure that it's treated so that it doesn't harm the environment and you keep all water, groundwater and surface water out of the wastewater, it was not functional year 100. It might not even have been functional at year 20. And so that's the disparity. Yeah, we have 100 year old systems and we like to think these old systems operate the same as a 10 year old system, but the reality is they haven't been
Mike
functional in the term of wastewater system for a very long time.
Angela
Right, right. If your goal is to truly protect the environment.
Mike
Yes.
Angela
Right. So the million dollar question, how big is the problem?
Mike
So I laugh at this because if you go to the EPA is the people that should be setting standards and should be addressing this issue. If you look at their website, even for sanitary sewer overflows, so this again visits that concept of functionality, that's a pretty good measure. How many sewer overflows do we have in the United States? Their answer is 23,000 to 75,000. That's a massive...
Angela
just a lot.
Mike
Well, it's a lot and it's a big variance. It's like, well, why don't you know?
Angela
Yeah. You can't nail that down just a little bit?
Mike
I mean, yeah, like it's not 50,000. It's 23,000 to 75,000 and I get it.
Angela
Because every one of them has to be, it has to be documented, right? You can't just have a sewer overflow with the way that the systems are supposed to be regulated. You cannot have a sewer overflow without documenting it.
Mike
Yeah, and if I roll this back to feasibility again, I mean to functionality, well, reality is if you put it in those terms, well, what's okay? I don't think 23,000 is okay. I know 75,000 is not okay. I mean, reality, the goal should be zero. Now, in reality, you probably can never achieve zero, but the reality...
Angela
What is the definition for them? What's the definition of an overflow for them? Like how many gallons does it have to hit for it to be an overflow? Like we hear it hits the news, right? When it hits, I don't know, like most of the ones that you see pop on the news are millions of gallons of wastewater. But what is that measurement for it to hit overflow status?
Mike
So in reality, I think you're supposed to, it's self-reporting and you're supposed to report any spill. So there's two things to consider there. It's self-reporting. So, you know, is 23,000 just the self-reported numbers and how many don't get reported? I can tell you, I hate to say this, probably a lot don't get reported. Maybe.
Angela
Maybe that's where the 75 comes in. So they know 23 get reported and they think maybe 75,000 is the actual number.
Mike
Yeah. And I can also say that I would, having been in the utility business, I'm, I mean, you've got somebody there that looks at a spill and goes, oh, that's 5,000, that's 10,000 gallons. There's no way to measure it. So I would also say not only is the number probably underestimated, even the volume is probably understated too, because it's subjective. And, you know, I don't think people are going to overstate it. I mean, the other…
Mike
the other statistic that I always found kind of, I always kind of follow what the American Society of Civil Engineers publish, because they do like a report card on infrastructure and whatnot. And they say that aging water and wastewater infrastructure costs the homeowners cumulatively about $59 billion a year. Leaks alone cost about $5.9 billion. That's...
Mike
I think that is probably on the water side mostly, but they also go on to say that of the nation's 16,000 wastewater treatment plants, they average that they operate at 81% capacity and 15% of them are already over capacity. So again, when you start thinking about this, okay, we got overflows, we got plants that are over capacity. Does that suggest that we really understand aging infrastructure? Probably not. We're way too accepting of the definition.
Angela
Mm-hmm. I was just going to say, do you think that it's that we don't understand it? Or do you think that it is? Is it actually that they don't know how to, it's kind of like the whole elephant, right? How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? But they feel like they need to eat the whole elephant all at once. And so they don't know where to take the first bite and they don't know how to pay for the first bite.
Mike
Well, true. And it's out of sight, out of mind. I mean, that is probably the biggest problem with wastewater. I mean, you think about a typical community, the sewers underground and the average person isn't aware that the sewer system is leaking until it's leaking out onto the ground. So when they see a spill, when they see it coming out in their front yard, yeah, that gets their attention. But if it's happening underground, they don't know.
Angela
Mm-hmm.
Mike
Same thing with the treatment plant. The treatment plants aren't normally in the middle of town. They're usually on a isolated property outside of town. So when a problem happens at a treatment plant, or simply being out of compliance for, and discharging the river out of compliance, the average person doesn't know that that's going on. So there's certainly this element of insulation from the average person. Because I think most people, I think would be offended if they knew.
I think back to when I was in the utility business and we'd have to do presentations for septic to sewer because we were doing a large septic to sewer program. And I would get people in the audience basically putting their hand up and going, hey, I don't why would I pay $10,000 for this? I don't have a problem. And I said, well, how do you know you don't have a problem with your septic system? And they would go, well, I flushed my toilet. It works.
Angela
Oh, well, that is not the bar.
Shawn
Right.
Mike
Said, okay. So, so, so I say, well, how old, how old's your house?And they, you know, they say, oh, it's about 35 years. Okay. So I said, so I'm going to paint a picture for me at the end of the story, tell me if you're offended, you know, or if you would call in your neighbor. And I said, so let's say, do you like sitting outside on your porch? Of course they go, yeah, I love this. This was in Florida. I love sitting out on my porch. And I'd say, okay, so let's say you're sitting out there. It's a nice evening, probably February, March, 75 degrees, sunshiny. And you see your neighbor come out with five gallon buckets and they do it
Mike
40 times over the day so you can do the math like that's a lot of buckets you see him come with this bucket and you go you know, let’s say your neighbor's name is Bob, finally yell over and go Bob. What are you doing? And Bob says I'm throwing my wastewater out of my yard And I say so would you phone the authorities on Bob and of course the answer was, well, yeah, of course. That's awful!
Angela
Of course. Yeah.
Mike
And Then I'd go why does it make you feel better that that's in fact probably what's happening 18 inches underground?
Angela
Yeah.
Mike
And certainly that starts to spur the thought, right? You know, and then I'd say, and it's not just you, we have 46,000 of these in our county. 46,000 Bobs throwing out 45 gallon buckets of wastewater out on their yard every day.
Angela
Yeah.
Mike
certainly paints a little bit different picture and creates a little different awareness. And it shows, like, when it's out of sight, out of mind, we just don't worry about it as much.
Angela
That's so, that is, I think that analogy is super impactful. Like, why is it better if it's 18 inches underground? Why, why, why is that okay? Because it's not right in your face.
Mike
Right. And most people, if the awareness is there, most people would be horrified. I mean, but the awareness just isn't there.
Angela
So...
Right. Of course. Everybody freaks out at ponding. Right? Ponding is always what piques people's interest.
Mike
So, So the reality in wastewater infrastructure. So, you know, I said 40 buckets, let's say at year 10 and it's a, you know, gravity sewer system that's leaking after 10 years. What if it's, you know, what's, what's acceptable? What if it's 10 buckets a day? That each home is, is that okay?
Angela
Right. Where's the line?
Mike
Well, right now we're saying it is because we're saying the system's good for 100 years. Then at year 30, what if it's 20 buckets that is intermixing? So that's why I say the confusion over what is aging infrastructure in my mind, it's not 50. It's not 100 years. It is, it is much earlier than that. And it's when that functionality of it is impaired in any way. So, you know, it's kind of a weird statement for people to hear, but that's, I mean...
Mike
We're very aware of stuff like, I always go back to the car because that's what people understand is, people will maintain their car because they got to drive it every day and they see it. And a car, most people, if you ask, well, what's an aging car? Some people might say 20 years, some will present it mileage, 200,000 miles. But the reality is if you didn't maintain it, what would be an aging car? It'd probably be like three years.
Angela
Yeah. Well, it's like a lot of, I mean, a computer, right? You have to update your computer to keep it running. And most of us, depending on if you have a PC or a Mac, which is a discussion for another day, don't want to use a computer past five years, a computer that's five years old is going to slow down significantly. And because we can tell
Angela
and we want it to work at a higher rate of speed, we're going to fix it. If you have the, uh, skill set, you can update the things that go in a computer that I am unaware of. Um, or you replace it.
Shawn
Mm-hmm.
Mike
Yep, yep, yep.
Angela
Alright, so my friend, what's the answer in your opinion?
Mike
Well, let's so let's start in case there's some regulators listening. I feel for regulators. I mean, you're out there regulating and you're trying to do the right thing. And I think the most unfortunate thing that I see in the regulatory world is that we regulators really generally don't flag a problem until it's really a problem. And what I mean by that is it's based on their
Mike
their sight line, which is typically what comes out the end of the pipe. You know, I talked about the goal is we collect the wastewater, we treat it. And at the end of the, where it comes out, wherever it comes out in the environment, they pull samples and decide if everything's working Okay. And then even when it starts, starts to not work Okay. They show some lenience say, Hey operator, do some adjustments, get this in place. And then they come back next year and say, you know, look at the samples again and go, Oh, creep. It's still there. And honestly.
Mike
sounds weird because we're right we sell equipment man I would love it if regulators would actually step it up and look at the guts that get it to the end of the pipe and really focus on it so in my perfect world regulators don't worry so much about what's coming out the end is that they regulate what where it starts and how it's managed and how it gets treated and really focus on the O&M side and make sure that if they have a system out there that requires this and this and this,
Mike
that the operator is skilled, is trained, licensed, and they're doing exactly what is prescribed to maintain that system. And again, with the car analogy, it starts to make sense, right? If your car manufacturer says, you need to change the oil every 3000 miles, change the oil every 3000 miles, don't ignore it. And I think the same thing here applies is that there'd be far less compliance issues at the end of the system if we spent more time focusing
Mike
earlier in the system. And it's almost like this preventive maintenance philosophy is I think from a regulatory perspective, they'd go, well, we don't have resources to do that. And I was kind of say, well, I think you use less resources if you keep people in compliance earlier than waiting till the crash point. And the problem is if you wait till there's really a problem at the end of the plant, so there's a couple issues, is that there's not enough data. The permits require a lot of permits,
Mike
reporting is the end of the pipe data and there's not enough data to troubleshoot the problem. So the first thing is you can't solve it tomorrow because you got to go back and start asking for more data, doing more sampling to figure out what's causing the issue. So that's not a good place to be. So expanding that oversight and requiring more samples so that you can actually troubleshoot a problem I think would be would be huge. And like I said really
Mike
If you start doing that, I think you'll need less resource because you're not gonna have as many systems that go out of compliance. It's just gonna use less resource. I think the other big thing is, and you'll see this, I always encourage everybody that thinks that wastewater, especially, well, utilities and wastewater, specifically in small communities right now is a sustainable system.
Mike
And I keep saying, well, I don't think it is. And they go, well, why do you think that? I always say, well, go just pick a state, any state you want and go look at the public funding list, whether it be USDA or Clean Water, SRF, and you're gonna see that 80% of the projects there are, have to do with renewal and replacement. So that in itself isn't a bad thing, but I always say, so look a little closer because a lot of those have
Mike
grant money attached. And the formulas for grant money is usually based on affordability. And if, and for communities that can't afford to fix their systems, they get grants from the state and from federal agencies to offset that cost. And it's a huge portion. It's over 70% of the projects typically have grant money attached. And so that doesn't suggest it's sustainable. That suggests it's unsustainable is that we have to subsidize all these systems to make them work. And so, so I think it's really, really important early on that.
Mike
that as we start designing and specifying infrastructure that the conversation also includes, well, what is the rate to sustain the system? And does it include reserves? You know, if you've got a million dollar lift station in there that has a 20 year life cycle on it, well, that means you might have a $600,000 rehab bill in year 20. Does your rate structure include that? So I think that's another place where we need to regulate it.
Mike
and get to the true cost of providing service is the true cost has to include reserves for future expenses. And that will drive the decisions if that's out there because very few of these utilities have reserves.
Angela
Right. Well, and I don't think that it's...
It's just not talked about, right? In one of our teams, we've been talking a bit about sewer rates and how where I live, my sewer rates are $30 a month. They are not $30 a month because that is my actual sewer burden. They're $30 a month because they're subsidized. And they've been subsidized. I've
owned this house for 19 years. My rates have only gone up once. They went from $25 to $30, right? And they haven't gone up. It's been that way for almost 20 years. That's been the cost of the sewer. And that's not my actual burden. There's no way because it's subsidized. But most people don't know that. They think that that's how much it really costs them.
Shawn
Right.
Mike
Right. Well, or the other thing that's or the other thing that's happening is you're they're not properly doing renewal and replacement. And eventually that cost burden is going to be placed on whoever's those customer or those customers are the day that somebody says, oh, we got to fix this. Yeah.
Shawn
Yeah, that's why you see so many news articles about customers getting all up in arms because the utility suddenly decided to impose a 25 to 60 percent increase in their, in their utility rate for water and sewer because now they've got a bill due and they can't afford to pay it.
Angela
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mike
Yeah. So the other one that I think will get a lot of people's attention, and I've boldly said this, I think the time has come to say that sewer systems, wastewater systems, there should be zero tolerance for leaks. Zero.
Angela
Yeah.
Shawn
Mm-hmm.
Mike
So what does that mean? Well, in my mind, it means that if you have, let's say a gravity collection system, that system is televised at no less than every five years. And if you see a leak...
Mike
It's not about just recording, oh, I've got a leak. It means you fix it. That day, the day that you know there's a leak, you fix the leak. And yeah, that would cost money, but again, revisit that functionality statement. Most of our treatment plants get in trouble because of leaking pipes. And the capacity that we lose in those systems costs millions and millions of dollars. I repeatedly say we spend so much money
Mike
out there analyzing options for wastewater collection and options for wastewater treatment. And I always say, you know what? I've got one thing for you to evaluate and it would drive the decision. And they look at me and go, what is it? And I said, I'm gonna tell you, it's I&I.
Angela
Yeah.
Mike
And I've had arguments with people where they say, wow, new gravity system doesn't have any leakage. I said, I don't really care about day one. Again, you are telling me that this system's gonna last 50 years, 75 years, 100 years.
Angela
Right, right.
Mike
So to me, if it's in line, again, use the car analogy, you know, it's not wait until it's cost effective to line a pipe or the cost benefit makes sense. When you find a problem, fix it. And all of a sudden, you're gonna make different decisions. And all of a sudden, you're gonna think about systems a little bit differently. And again, I like to tell stories. I mean, my aha moment came when I was in utility.
Mike
And I sat there, so I had the capability of looking at various collection systems that we operated, and we had pressure systems, and we had gravity sewer systems. And I was able to actually quantify flows. And it was kind of cool, because obviously this is in Florida, we got a lot of rain. And after a rain event, we would get, see a big difference in flow, to the point that the plant that I was doing the evaluations in was rated at 5 million gallons a day. And I think the meter...
Mike
pegged at 12 million gallons a day.
Angela
Wow.
Mike
The meter would peg with a one inch rain event. And so could the plant handle it? Yes, the plant handled it hydraulically. But what was interesting, so I worked back into the collections, I was like, where is this coming from? And what's the state? Because it was really, really interesting. When you looked at the gravity system, literally a rain event would impact the treatment plant for weeks, meaning that the I&I was still coming in.
Angela
Mm-hmm. Right.
Mike
10 days later. In the pressure system, we didn't have the best pressure system and it was before the pressure system started, like in the house lateral and stuff, we'd see some leakage there. But because of the elevation of the pressure tanks, that rain event would only cause a really sharp I&I event and it would stop within hours. It would basically just be during the rain event. So I was able to take that down and go, okay, what is the difference
in cost between this impact that's 10 days and this impact that's literally hours? And in some cases on a tight system, maybe the impact's nothing if it's a good pressure system. And what I found was the biggest, or sorry, the cost of I&I when I started adding it up was more than the cost of actually operating the wastewater collection system. And when people go, well, that doesn't make sense. Who does start tracing it through? So if you have an I&I, I just told you that
Mike
were pegging so we don't know what the total flow was but it was probably in the range of three to four times average day flow so and if it's lasting for days as it's doing it's basically just eating up your capacity in your plant because you have to average out so yeah you gotta collect it you gotta pump it those are cost easy pretty easy to calculate might have some overflows because the system can't handle it during the rain event
Mike
But the biggest cost is when it gets to the treatment plant, that's chewing up capacity that you can't sell. And as plants become more advanced and more costly to build, that capacity can be worth 50, 75, $100 per treated gallon. So now think about it, if I'm losing, for every gallon that I'm losing, if that gallon is worth $100, and 30, 40% of my plant flow is...
Angela
Right.
Mike
is taken up by I&I, start running the numbers on what that's worth. What it costs to build that capacity that you can't sell, what it costs for the interest on the money you have to borrow, and all of a sudden you're going to start to go, oh, I&I is absolutely the biggest factor in wastewater systems and we pretty much ignore it.
Angela
Mm-hmm.
It would be interesting to me to know how much we spend in this country on feasibility studies alone.
Mike
Sure. So again, pointing the finger at the regulators, I think they control the purse strings a lot. I think that is a conversation that should happen over and over and over again. You should not be able to do a life cycle analysis without talking about I and I in year 40.
Angela
I agree.
Shawn
Mm-hmm.
Mike
You know, the other thing I think that's missing out there a lot in terms of aging infrastructure is, you know, we have, especially in small utilities, a small utility may only have two people. It may only have one person operating the system and the collection portion is often ignored. So we gave that analogy about the restaurants being added.
Angela
Mm-hmm.
Mike
So I think, I really think that every utility should be trained. Every operator should be trained on pretreatment and what comes out of those systems that arrives at the plant. Cause that's...
as I suggested, that's what's causing a lot of really good systems to age prematurely, is because nobody's policing what's coming into that plant. Big utilities have pre-treatment officers. I think even small utilities and regulators have a role in this, to train them on what they need to do out in the collection system. What are the standards? How often should they pump grease traps? How often should I sample a restaurant to make sure they're doing things right before it causes a problem that costs my ratepayers money?
Mike
So I think that's another huge one. I think I talked about monitoring beyond the end of the pipe. So I think there's, I think that operating permits have to be written around the ability to troubleshoot so that when you start to see a problem, regulators and manufacturers and engineers have the data at their hands to properly look at the plant and very quickly see what the likely problems are instead of having to go out there and evaluate the plant. So I think
Mike
that's a big one that would be really cool. The other thing is, I think, you know, in Florida does this is every state should have a schedule of when plant expansions need to occur. And I know in Florida, when a plant reaches 60% of its capacity, you have to start designing your expansion. When it reached 80%, you have to build it. And when, you know, I talked about earlier that 15% of the plants are over capacity. That shouldn't happen. You know, at Orenco, we sell wastewater plants. It's not our fault
if a plant's 15% over capacity. And yet right now, guess who they call? We get calls all the time where somebody goes, oh, my plant's out of compliance. And we go, okay, send us data. We go, plants pass capacity.
Angela
Right, right. That would be why it's not in compliance.
Shawn
Right?
Exactly.
Mike
You know, what would you like us to do? I'll then suggest you expand it, you know? So that's an interesting one. And then finally, the biggest one, I picked on regulators enough.
Mike
I'm gonna pick on the engineering community a little bit, is thinking about this issue with sustainability, especially in small communities. And I've talked about this before is, is engineers really need to focus in on sustainability and make sure that when they're tasked to evaluate options, when they're tasked to design options, that they really focus in on this
idea of aging infrastructure and sustainability and make sure that if an important element is maintenance, that they actually specify infrastructure that a community can maintain and that they make decisions that really focus in on making infrastructure, life cycle of infrastructure, that it's optimized. And the unfortunate part is, I don't know that wasn't taught to me in engineering school and it's...
Angela
Right.
Mike
It's not today. There's not a lot of guidance on that. There's not a lot of guidance from the regulatory environment on this and And frankly the funding agencies will fund Anything without taking consideration of this so that would be my last point is I'd love to see some changes in that and kind of call in the engineering community to really educate themselves and And make sure that we have you know optimized sustainable wastewater infrastructure
Shawn
Mm-hmm.
Angela
That is the perfect close.
Mike
Hopefully.
Angela
So, Shawn and I wanted to try something a little new.
Oh, he's like, Oh no, what are you getting me into? So, I don't know if you saw it, but Shawn and I released a podcast this week or last week, um, last week that talked about our Why’s. So why each of us is in this industry, right? This is a
Shawn
Last week, yeah.
Angela
It's a niche. It's um, it's not often seen as, as glamorous. We are talking about wastewater, uh, and it can sometimes feel like an uphill battle as we're, uh, trying to break old, old knowledge sets. I don't, not really sure what term to use, but…
So our question to you is, what is your why?
Mike
That's actually a pretty easy one. First of all, never, when I went to school, a lot of people don't know this, but I thought I was going to be a transportation engineer and that's my final year. That's what I focused on was traffic and transportation. Guess how long I worked in that field? Zero.
Angela
How long? You're like, nah.
Mike
I kind of landed in utilities and water and wastewater somewhat indirectly by accident and it was probably the best thing ever happened because you know I always hear people talk about you know that if you do something you're passionate about It's not really a job and certainly there's when you start thinking about Wastewater and even just comparing it, you know, not that traffic and transportation isn’t important, but man, that's way more meaningful to
Mike
to protect public health, to protect the environment, to change, to make changes in communities that, you know, they're economic standing. There's so many things you can impact by providing dependable wastewater service. And, you know, if you think about travel and transportation, people can put up with a traffic jam. They clearly do.
Angela
Right, right.
Mike
I'm not saying that's not meaningful and not something to be passionate about, but man, if you're trying to pick something to be passionate about and that grows on you, it's the measurable things that you can do and you can see that you've impacted through your career. I don't know that I had that same answer when I was 25, but I'm older than 25 now.
Angela
Just a little bit.
Mike
There's no doubt as I look back over the 30 years I've been doing this is that I can sit there and think about the things that I've had meaningful impacts on and just go, wow.
Angela
Yeah.
Mike
For years, I'd drive by wastewater plants and I made a habit of always pointing out a wastewater plant to my kids and they would be rolling their eyes. And I think I'm starting to get older now, I have a new appreciation. It's like, oh, now I get it why you do this.
Angela
Yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. All right. Well, thank you for joining us, Mike, and talking us through this again.
Mike
anytime.
Angela
And as always, thanks to you guys for listening.
