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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
Wastewater in the News
In this conversation, Angela and Shawn discuss various news topics related to the wastewater industry. We cover articles on wastewater surveillance for pathogens, flood risks in coastal cities, and water reuse and recycling. The conversation highlights the importance of monitoring and predicting disease outbreaks through wastewater surveillance, the impact of aging infrastructure and rising sea levels on flood risks, and the benefits of water reuse and recycling in reducing the burden on wastewater systems.
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00:08
Angela: Hello and welcome to Make It Clear, a conversational podcast about all things related to water and wastewater. I'm your host, Angela Bounds, and I'm joined by my co-host, Shawn Rapp. In each episode, we'll tackle a relevant topic with facts and expert opinions and make things clear. Hello and thank you for joining us again. Today, it's just gonna be Shawn and I. Hi, Shawn.
Shawn: Hey, it's good to be back.
Angela: Yeah. And we're gonna be discussing...
00:38
different news topics, right? So sewers in the news. I guess we haven't really named this series where he and I do this, but we're gonna go through some articles that we've seen published in the last month or so and then discuss them and how they pertain to the wastewater industry and things that you may have on the docket, issues you may be running into wherever you're at. Or just for your own
01:08
information so that you're aware of what happens around wastewater.
Shawn: I'll tell you, every time we do one of these, I learned something new.
Angela: I know. I actually really enjoy these. I guess I learned something new in every podcast.
Shawn: True.
Angela: But it's interesting to talk about the articles because you see different perspectives and different things that people are looking for and, you know, even outside of
01:37
where we really sit, right? And the way that we treat wastewater, which I guess leads into the first article on pathogens. Right, so there was a… wastewater surveillance reveals pathogens in Detroit's population, helping monitor and predict disease outbreaks since 2017. So the article was really all about the lab that's doing this work and
02:07
there was a lot of testing around COVID done on the wastewater streams.
Shawn: There really was.
Angela: Yeah. And it's interesting for, for me, this kind of article is interesting because it gives us perspective outside of the normal wastewater treatment that we do, right? We're looking for different constituents and different… we're just looking for different things to remove from the waste stream. Whereas,
02:36
this lab is looking for pathogens, but I can't help but think that eventually that is one of the directions that wastewater treatment will, will head. Right.
Shawn: Yeah. This was actually an interesting article in, in the fact that this really wasn't a big issue or a big topic of discussion pre COVID. And this kind of became a thing during COVID, but in the interim,
03:06
since then, in the last couple of years, they've made big strides in not only detecting things like COVID, but other diseases and other pathogens in wastewater. And it was really interesting because they're talking about how they've been able to in the past predict several, like maybe five or six days prior to a major outbreak based on the population of pathogens within wastewater.
03:33
It's interesting to kind of watch this kind of thing happen. Like I said, this was not on my radar before 2020.
Angela: Right. But it likely moves through the waste stream. Right. We're not removing everything.
Shawn: Right.
Angela: Microplastics… There's lots of stuff that is not removed from the waste stream.
Shawn: Forever chemicals, all that stuff.
Angela: Forever chemicals, all of those things. So it's,
03:58
It's interesting. It's, it's really interesting to read. It doesn't always pertain to exactly what we do, but I don't know.
Shawn: Maybe someday it will.
Angela: Well, maybe we're just nerds. And like we're wastewater nerds. And so if you read the word wastewater in an article, like it pertains to what we're doing and becomes interesting, even if it has, doesn't have an application at the moment.
Shawn: Right. Well, what makes me kind of curious and I don't know…
04:28
We may, this may not be a thing, but what if this is something that larger populations that are on say… like small communities and things like that, that are on small wastewater systems or individual septic systems, the states decide that they want service providers to start monitoring for that for compliance? Then that becomes a thing. And I mean, just like I said, it may, it may never happen, but somebody
04:57
may at some point decide, hey, we want to start checking all systems for X, you know?
Angela: Yeah. It's important to know.
Shawn: Yeah.
Angela: It's important to keep abreast of those things.
Shawn: Yep.
Angela: Speaking of hot topics in the news, we're going to talk a little bit about coastal cities again. Coastal cities face flood risks due to aging infrastructure and rising seas.
Shawn: Very interesting article.
05:27
Aging infrastructure is something we've talked about quite a bit before.
Angela: Yeah.
Shawn: This kind of brought some different aspects to it in that something I had never considered in all of this was they're talking about combined sewer systems, so you've got water overflows as well as septic and like… stormwater and septic,
Angela: stormwater and septic.
Shawn: Yeah. Going to the same place. And it used to be that that would all…
05:53
fall out into a river or into a bay or something like that. But this new added kind of hitch in the system is that, talking about with rising sea levels, sometimes those gates that they… used to be automatic gates to allow that water to go out aren't opening anymore because there's too much pressure and the water is too high from the rising seas. The water pressure is too much to overcome. And so streets start flooding
06:23
with sewage.
Angela: Yeah. We've done webinars and I think that we've talked a lot about rising sea levels also and just what we've seen around it, what happens or what is happening, especially along the Eastern seaboard and just how it affects communities. And this is just one more part of that, right? Flooding cities because it can't release.
06:51
It's just another reason to really, really pay attention to that aging infrastructure and what that means for your community and how can you help? How can we begin to address the aging infrastructure? Cause if you don't, I mean, for goodness sakes, you know, infrastructure ages all the time, but the older that you allow it to get, the more
07:20
dire the situations become.
Shawn: And the more expensive to replace.
Angela: And the more expensive to replace. So, I mean, getting ahead of that curve, attempting to get ahead of that curve as much as possible, every time I read an article like this that points out another, you know, issue around sea level rise and aging infrastructure, I'm just like, oh my gosh, we have to get this addressed. We have to… we have to do all things necessary.
07:50
to deal with that aging infrastructure and sea level rise, especially in those coastal areas that are going to be the most affected. So the last thing that we wanted to touch on was water reuse and recycling, which is near and dear to my heart because I am definitely in favor of all things sustainability.
08:20
To me and many others, that means reusing and recycling your water, your waste stream, whatever you can.
Shawn: Right, exactly. It was kind of interesting in this article. I kind of get the gist that they were talking about how wastewater reuse and recycling is becoming less expensive based on newer technologies and the use of say MBRs, moving bed reactors, things like that.
08:48
One of the points that they emphasize, which again, I hadn't thought of it in quite this way, is that the more water you can recycle and reuse, the less the burden on the wastewater system, the actual wastewater system for treating waste.
Angela: The actual wastewater system, yep. And the less burden on your whole… you know, if you can, I always encourage drip irrigation. I know that there are some states that allow spray irrigation, but that's a topic for another day.
09:17
Shawn: Mm-hmm.
Angela: So, you know, drip irrigating, instead of using clean water, drinking level, clean water to water your lawns and water your flower beds and all of that. You can recycle gray water.
Shawn: Yep.
Angela: You can recycle that side of the waste stream and reuse it for things like lawns,
Shawn: washing cars…
Angela: washing cars, washing…
09:47
Shawn: flushing toilets…
Angela: Yeah, flushing toilets…lots of different things around the house.
Shawn: One of the other interesting aspects that they happened to touch on that, again, I didn't think about was that communities that use, have an active recycle system for water, can use that as a source of additional revenue as well.
Angela: Yep. Yeah.
Shawn: Interesting.
Angela: Really interesting. All of these things really make you think. I think that's the reason that I like
10:16
the articles. They give you pause, they make you think deeper about these issues. We can all get inundated and really involved in the thing that's in front of us in the moment and the stuff that we've got going on that is dire and in need of our attention immediately. But every time that we go over these articles, whether it's reuse or sea level rise or
10:45
microplastics or whatever it is. It makes you think.
Shawn: Yeah.
Angela: It's a little brain exercise.
Shawn: Yep. Exactly.
Angela: All right. Anything else you want to say about these articles?
Shawn: No, I think just kind of a quick cover of them just to kind of get this out there, but really interesting information.
Angela: Yeah.
Shawn: I, like I said, I love doing these…
Angela: I do too.
Shawn: episodes. So…
Angela: Me too. All right. Well, thanks for listening again and we'll see you next time.
11:16
We want to thank you again for joining us today. Before you go, don't forget to subscribe where you listen to podcasts, so you're notified when new episodes are posted. Also, you can leave your comments or suggestions through the contact link on our website, www.orenco.com. Until next time, have a great day.
