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WaterOperator.org Blog


Cassia Smith
Cassia Smith
Cassia Smith's Blog

Featured Video: Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority

There are a lot of rewards to living in a rural community: seeing just enough of your neighbors, lots of satisfying work, and (depending on where you live) getting to see the beauty of nature in the way a city dweller never can. Unfortunately for rural water utility operators, some of these benefits don't completely translate to their jobs. If you're the only operator---the only employee---at a rural utility, sometimes independence and hard work end up meaning the operation of the utility is all up to you all the time. Never being able to take a day off or have a vacation can be tiring enough. But you add in some of the weather Mother Nature can produce while she's busy being scenic, and sometimes you end up working nights, weekends, and 24-hour days, trying to keep your friends and neighbors supplied with clean, safe drinking water.

If this sounds familiar, a regional partnership might offer you a little breathing space. Regional partnerships can give you the opportunity to get a nearby operator to cover your utility while you take a vacation or go to town for a doctor's visit. Pooling your resources with other rural utilities can also help you qualify for employer insurance, access tools and resources from neighboring communities, and meet other knowledgeable operators. This 7-minute video from the Rural Community Assistance Corporation shows how a regional partnership helped unincorporated communities known as colonias help each other:

Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority from RCAC on Vimeo.

To see more resources for water utilities from RCAC, check out their Guidebooks.

Featured Video: This American Land: Critical Aquifer

If you're in an area of the country that's naturally dry, or in one of the states currently experiencing drought, you've probably had a lot of time to think about how to save water. Tips for conserving water around the home are a Google away (or check our document database!), but chances are, your biggest local water users aren't residential. If your area is dry enough that you need to be thinking about water use on a regional scale, then your local farmers may be needing some water conservation help too. In this 7-minute video, the USDA NRCS discusses the Ogallala Aquifer Initiative, where they worked with local farmers to grow more crops with less water:

If you want to learn more about the Ogallala Aquifer Initiative, check out this article. If you want to learn more about water conservation at water utilities, go to our document database, type "water conservation" (without the quote marks) into the Keyword Search field, and select Type "Manuals/Handbooks". Then click "Retrieve Documents".

Featured Video: Communicating Science

As a water utility professional, you probably spend at least some time talking to people about your job. Whether you're explaining operations to a utility board, breaking down a bill for a customer, or just chatting at a barbeque, eventually, someone is going to want to know how and why you do what you do. For some of you, this might be an easy task--you're an outgoing educator with a passion for your job. For others though, getting asked questions on the spot makes your mind go blank and your palms go sweaty. Still others may be happy to talk, but have a hard time getting people interested in what you have to say. Trying to help people understand a topic as complex as water and wastewater treatment can be a challenge, particularly when you're immersed in the topic yourselves. Add in the financial challenges some small systems face, and opening up meaningful communication with your community can feel even more daunting.


Scientists face similar challenges. Like water operators, scientists have a lot of knowledge about complex fields with specialized jargon. The work they do may not be obvious to people outside the profession, just like utility operations can feel hidden in plain sight. One resource that helps scientists learn how to communicate with the press and other non-scientists is the Alda-Kavli Center for Science Communication. In this video, co-founder Alan Alda talks about his inspiration for starting the Center and some of the basic communication principles he keeps in mind:



To read about water utility outreach programs, visit our document database and type "public relations" (without the quote marks) into the Keyword search field, then click "Retrieve Documents." Being open with your community about the challenges and successes at their utility can help you gain public support, even when you need to undertake big projects like rate hikes or infrastructure overhauls. Even if you don't have big projects looming on the horizon, taking the extra time to engage with your community can make your job more rewarding, and builds goodwill for when you do need a helping hand. If nothing else, taking some time to think about these issues ahead of time will give you some better conversation topics at your next barbecue.

Featured Video: Rural Missouri Climate Adaptation

Though it may still feel like spring, depending on where you are in the country, summer is just around the corner. And with summer comes the possibility of drought. Is your utility at risk of drought conditions? Do you know what you'd do if a drought visited your community? Occasional but severe weather events can feel hard to plan for, but not planning at all can make the situation worse. In this 2-minute video, a small rural community in Missouri talks about the planning efforts they're taking on to be prepared for drought in the future, after a particularly tough 2012. Interestingly, their plans to combat drought mesh well with their concerns about sediment in their source water supply as well.

If you'd like to learn more about climate adaptation planning for your utility, check out the tools available through the EPA's Climate Resilient Water Utilities portal, and in particular their risk assessment tool.

Featured Video: Is Your Drinking Water Protected?

For the last two weeks, our featured videos have talked about the benefits of stormwater management. While stormwater management and green infrastructure are great ways of protecting your source water, a lot more goes into source water protection. Source water protection plans, wellhead protection plans, and watershed protection areas can all play a vital role in ensuring your source water enters your treatment plant in the best condition possible. This week's video takes three minutes to summarize the financial, environmental, and water quality benefits of formal source water protection planning. It does mention the state of Pennsylvania specifically, but much of the information is useful to anyone considering these questions.


If you're interested in learning more about how source water protection planning works, you might be interested in the materials offered by the Washington Department of Health's Source Water Protection program and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's Wellhead Protection program. 

Featured Video: Green Infrastructure for Small Rural Communities

Last week, we shared videos for educating your consumers in ways to improve stormwater quality and increase infiltration. But maybe you're interested in these topics as well. In that case, this week's video is for you. This hour-long webinar recording highlights green infrastructure efforts taken on by two small, rural communities. Representatives from the utilities in those communities discuss reasons why they wanted to take on stormwater management, reasons why they chose green infrastructure, the projects and programs they implemented, lessons learned, and project funding. It includes before and after and process images, but is not a highly detailed build guide.

> For public outreach stormwater videos, see last week's blog. For more practical insights into the construction of stormwater management structures, search our document database using the category Stormwater and type Manuals/Handbooks. If you want to narrow it down further, try selecting by your state or a state near you, or type "BMP" (without the quote marks) in the Keyword search filter.

Featured Video: Freddy the Fish

If April showers have arrived at your utility, then stormwater topics are probably at the forefront of your mind---and your customers' minds too. This makes it a great moment for public education. There are things utilities can do to mitigate stormwater quality, but nothing works quite as well as having your community pitch in to clean up the watershed. This week's video presents basic practices that improve stormwater quality, in terms aimed at your youngest consumers. Freddy the Fish focuses on reducing litter, picking up dog poop, and eliminating storm sewer dumping, and combines these messages with animated and live-action video and brief singalongs. The video would be a particularly good fit for presentations to young school-age children, which in turn can be a great way to engage your community.

For more stormwater public outreach materials, search our document database using the category Stormwater and the type Factsheets/Case Studies. You might also be interested in the EPA's video on stormwater (for adults) here.

Featured Video: Arsenic Treatment in a Rural Town

Over time, low levels of exposure to arsenic can result in cancer. This is a sobering fact for anyone, but it's particularly challenging for small rural towns with arsenic in their drinking water. When neither the utility nor the residents have access to other water options, treatment is of the utmost importance. But because arsenic doesn't cause taste or odor issues, or produce immediate health effects, getting that treatment in place can sometimes be difficult. Learning how other small utilities did it can help. In this week's video, the manager of a small rural utility in Montana introduces his utility and describes how they chose to put arsenic treatment in place for their system.

For more on arsenic in drinking water topics, see this USEPA factsheet (PDF), or search our document database using the category Arsenic.

Featured Video: Valve Maintenance

Spring is traditionally the time to knock out the cobwebs and dust off the high shelves. For those of us living in areas with cold winters, it's often the first time going outside has felt pleasant for months. For those in warmer climates, it's often time to batten down the hatches for the serious summer heat. But no matter where you live, spring cleaning season is officially here. And your utility doesn't need to be any different! Spring can be a great time to start your valve exercise program, whether you're making your post-winter maintenance assessment or getting things in shape for the summer. And this week's video, from our partners at the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP), is a great resources as you get started. The 4-and-a-half minute video provides a brief walkthrough of the valve exercising process, along with dos and don'ts and maintenance tips.

For more videos from RCAP, check out their channel on Vimeo. For more on valve topics, search our document database using the keywords "valve exercising" or "valve maintenance" (both without the quote marks) in the Keyword Filter.

Featured Video: Operator Math

In a lot of ways, the ability to do math is like the ability to use a muscle. You always have muscles, of course, but whether you're able to use a particular muscle or muscle group depends on how developed it is. In other words, it depends on how often you use those muscles, whether you're lifting weights regularly or just hauling around a heavy toolbox on a daily basis. Math is the same way. Sure, on any good day you can probably handle 2 + 2. But for more complicated problems, regular practice and a thorough understanding of the principles can help those equations go from a headache to a breeze. Since water and wastewater operators often find themselves calculating things like chemical doses, the volume of complicated objects, and rate of flow, keeping in good mathematic shape can go a long way to making your life easier. And of course, being in practice doesn't do any harm when it's time to sit for your exams either!

There are a lot of ways to brush up on your math skills, and sometimes it helps to try a couple until you find what works best for you. Our document database has collected math help in a wide variety of formats under the Certification/Exam Prep category. Use "math" (without the quote marks) in the keyword filter box to narrow it down to just math help. But if you're someone who needs to see someone else work the problem in order to get what's going on, this week's videos might be a particularly good fit.

Indigo Water Group, a water and wastewater operator trainer in Colorado, has created a playlist of videos in which their owner works common water and wastewater math problems. Most of these videos are short and broken down by kind of problem. The exception is an hour long video devoted to wastewater math. At the time of this writing, the other videos in the playlist covered unit conversions, geometry, dosing, reducing MLSS concentrations, velocity and HRT, and digester problems. But more topics have been slowly added over time, so there may be more in the future. The video below links the entire playlist, which starts with three short unit conversion videos.

The YouTube channel CAwastewater takes a slightly different approach. Instead of breaking the videos down by topic, the channel owner (who is an operator himself) breaks down the videos by the state exam level where the problems are most likely to appear. He has playlists for the California exam levels 1, 2, and 3, and one playlist that combines the math for 4 and 5. Though these videos are aimed at California wastewater operators, both water and wastewater operators from across the country will likely get something out of them. The individual videos are about 5-10 minutes long, and the playlists are about a half hour to an hour. Choose the playlist that looks most interesting to you.

Hopefully, these operator math videos will help you round out your mathematical fitness routine, leaving you well prepared for operations challenges and certification exams alike. And if there's a great free math resource that we didn't mention here that you want to be sure we know about, let us know in the comments!