Featured Video: Wastewater Treatment Series

If you've worked in administration at a wastewater utility, you probably know the whole process is a lot more complicated than some might think. Even the process of getting the waste from the houses in the community to the treatment center requires vigilance. And then the steps of the treatment process start to pile up. Preliminary, primary, secondary, and then there's sludge and effluent and different ways of handling those. Whether you're the mayor, on the board of directors, answering phones in the office, or cutting the checks, you've probably had to deal with different stage of this process over the course of your job.

If that's the case, here's a chance to brush up on the details of wastewater treatment without getting overwhelmed by technical language. In this week's video series, knowledgeable staffers from the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) explain the technical steps of wastewater in layman's terms. These videos are intended to help leaders, board members, and other administrative staff understand what's going on in the operation of their utility. This understanding can help you understand how to make wise operational, maintenance, and expansion decisions that take the realities of utility operation into account. The introduction video is embedded below; each of the following videos can be viewed by clicking on the titles below.

Wastewater Treatment - Introduction from RCAP on Vimeo.

1. Wastewater Treatment - Collection System
2. Wastewater Treatment - Preliminary Treatment
3. Wastewater Treatment - Primary Treatment
4. Wastewater Treatment - Secondary Treatment
5. Wastewater Treatment - Solids and Sludge Handling
6. Wastewater Treatment - Effluent Disinfection
7. Wastewater Treatment - Effluent Disposal

For more on wastewater treatment for non-operators, see RCAP's A Drop of Knowledge handbook for wastewater systems. (There's one for drinking water systems too!)