Featured Video: Sewer Dye Testing A municipal sanitary sewer system is designed to collect and transport wastewater from homes, offices, businesses, restaurants and other sources to a municipal wastewater treatment plant for treatment and safe discharge into the environment. If other sources of water are allowed to enter the sewer system, the collection system and wastewater treatment plant can become over loaded allowing untreated water to be discharged. This is defined as sanitary sewer overflows, or SSO’s. One of the biggest sources of excess water is infiltration of storm water and groundwater into the sanitary sewers. A method to detect this infiltration is through dye testing. Dye testing is a simple procedure where storm drains, yard drains, and the outside of the foundation walls of the house, or other areas are flooded with water to simulate a period of heavy rainfall. The colored water is pumped through the ground and storm water system and appears in the sanitary sewer collection system where leaks occur. This test is simple and complements smoke testing that may have been done previously. The dye testing procedure can be accomplished in the following steps. Isolating a section of the storm water network to test by plugging pipes at specific locations. Then, bright-dyed water is pumped into the storm water network until it reaches capacity. Remote CCTV cameras are deployed into the sanitary sewer system, where any points of storm water ingress are highlighted clearly by the dyed water. Once the testing is completed, the locations of these sources of infiltration makes the process of repairing these leaks far more straightforward facilitating effective piping and system repairs which keep infiltration to a minimum. A video showing how dye testing can be carried out is shown below: August 17, 2020 By Phil Vella Sanitary Sewers Collection Systems, Dye Testing, Sanitary Sewer Overflows, Sewers, SSO 0 0 Comment Read More »
Spooky Sewers and Things That Go Bump at the Treatment Plant: 2018 Edition An October chill is in the air and darkness is falling earlier and earlier. It must be time to share our annual bone-chilling list of some of the wierdest, wackiest and downright most frightening water operator stories we came across this year (check out last year's list here)! First, can you imagine what it would be like to get sucked through a sewer for over a mile? Well, it happened to this man when his safety harness came undone back in 2010. And although he survives, the crappy experience is surely something he will never forget. While we are talking collections O&M, here's a video describing one characteristic of a successful wastewater operator: a strong stomach. Another characteristic? Knowing not to "fling this on your partner." And believe me, you don't want to know what "this" is! Sometimes, though, what flows into a sewer simply doesn't come out, no matter how much you work on it. That is when you call in the professionals: sewer divers. This is exactly what the water system in Charleston, SC did when they could not clear an obstruction earlier this month. They sent specialized sewer divers 80-90 feet deep into raw sewage in complete darkness to search for the obstruction with their hands.. What did they find? You guessed it: a large mass of "flushable" wipes. Lucky for us, the water system documented the whole episode on social media, but respectfully shot the pictures in low-res for our benefit. If you want to dive deeper into the topic of sewer exploration, we double dare you to watch this video about a man who swims through Mexico City's wastewater system on a regular basis to keep it working. Other types of obstructions have to be dealt with in other ways. This past summer, utility workers spotted an alligator swimming in the Mineral Springs, PA wastewater treatment plant. A private contractor hired by the state Fish and Boat Commission had to use dead animals as bait to try and snag the gator with a fishing hook. You have to admit, wastewater often gets a bad wrap. To prove this, just ask any operator from Baltimore's wastewater treatment plant what happened there back in 2009. That was the year they had to call in experts to deal with a 4-acre spider web that had coated the plant. According to a scientific paper that appeared in American Entomologist, the “silk lay piled on the floor in rope-like clumps as thick as a fire hose” where plant employees had swept aside the webbing to access equipment. Scientists estimate the megaweb contained about 107 million spiders Finally, it wouldn't be Halloween without ghosts, or ghost water, to be more precise. What is ghost water you ask? Well, pervasive leaks and long repair delays are causing water to disappear in Kansas City, Missouri (a kind of haunting experienced by water systems all across the country it seems). According to this 2017 article, nobody knows exactly where the water is going, but the water department points to faulty meters, theft, aging pipes and abandoned houses. Spooky! October 31, 2018 By Brenda Koenig Emergency Response, Operations and Maintenance, Sanitary Sewers, Small System O&M, Wastewater, Water Treatment, Workforce Halloween, messaging, Outreach, Public Relations, sanitary sewers, sewer divers, sewer diving, sewers, Wastewater treatment, Water Treatment 0 0 Comment Read More »