Tap Talk – The Olympics of Water Quality: WEFTEC’s Operations Challenge

Were you able to attend this year's WEFTEC in Chicago, or did you have to miss it? Either way, it's worth it to take the time to learn more about the Operations Challenge competition conducted at each WEFTEC — You can relive the excitement, if you were at this year's conference, or hear why you absolutely need to attend next year in New Orleans so you don't miss the fun!

Luckily, we covered the ins and outs of Operations Challenge in one of our first episodes of Season 6 of Tap Talk, the Drinking Water in Rural America Podcast. Our team has been producing this podcast since 2021, with the aim of connecting professionals across the drinking water community with ideas to extend and enhance water work. The podcast is a collaboration between the Rural Community Assistance Partnership and the University of Illinois, with funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The show is hosted by Steve and Jennifer Wilson of the Illinois State Water Survey’s WaterOperator.org, PrivateWellClass.org, and DecentralizedWastewater.org programs. Episodes of past seasons have primarily focused on municipal water treatment and private well-related topics, while recent seasons have begun exploring septic/decentralized wastewater topics as well. 

In episode #62, we welcomed Steve Harrison and Jeff Sober to Tap Talk. Steve, a WEF senior manager, and Jeff, Director of Water Services at Garver, are both members of the Operations Challenge Community. Just ahead of WEFTEC 2025, they gave our hosts a complete rundown of the annual showcase of the top water quality operations teams in the country. 

Listen through the audio player below, or, find Tap Talk on audio services such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, or Audible.

And be sure to read about the winners who prevailed in this year's 38th Annual Operations Challenge Competition!

Topics Discussed

• Meet Steve Harrison | LinkedIn
• Steve’s Water Hero: Cordell Samuels, Past President of WEF and retired Plant Superintendent at the Region of Durham in Ontario.
• Meet Jeff Sober | LinkedIn
• Jeff’s Water Hero: His father, Gary Sober, who gave Jeff his first job in the water industry.
• What is WEFTEC and what does it represent for the water industry?
• What is the Operations Challenge and what does the competition include?
• History of the Operations Challenge
• How does a team get to WEFTEC?
• How the challenge affects professionals throughout the industry
• How the challenge supports the mission of WEF
• What else to see at WEFTEC
• Connect with the Water Environment Federation and WEFTEC
  • WEF: Website | LinkedIn | X/Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
  • WEFTEC: Website | Facebook | X/Twitter

    “You get a better workforce out of this. One that knows how to respond to all challenges and to be more resilient; and one that respects the positions and challenges of all the others as well.”

    Jeff Sober

Go Further

You’re invited to discuss the episode in our LinkedIn Group. If you decide to share on Twitter, please use the hashtag #TapTalkPodcast. And, of course, make sure to subscribe in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

About the Guests

Steve Harrison is Director of Operator Programs at the Water Environment Federation and is coordinator of Operations Challenge, WEFTEC’s award winning professional skills competition. He has contributed to many water sector workforce initiatives, including developing apprenticeship standards, coordinating regional workforce approaches, and launching the workforwater.org website. He holds a B.S. in Natural Resources Management from the University of Maryland, is a Board Certified Environmental Scientist, a Certified Mission Critical Professional, has a NASSCO Pipeline Assessment Certification Program credential, and is a member of the Select Society of Sanitary Sludge Shovelers.

Jeff Sober is the Director of Garver’s Water Services. He also sits on Garver’s Board of Directors. Jeff has 23 years of experience in the water and wastewater industry, focusing on large-scale facility master planning, wastewater treatment process design, grit removal science, and biosolids. He is a Past President of the Water Environment Association of Texas and currently serves as Past Chair of the WEF Operations Challenge Committee. He has been responsible for leading operations training and workforce development initiatives in Texas, in addition to leading one of the fastest-growing water and wastewater engineering services firms in the nation.

Jeff holds a B.S. and an M.Eng. in civil engineering, both from Texas A&M University. In 2025, he was named a WEF Fellow, one of the water industry’s most distinguished honors.

VirCon 2025 Announcement

Our partners at the RCAP network deliver in-person training nationwide, as do the hundreds of training providers we list on the WaterOperator.org calendar. But, we know it can be difficult to get away from the day-to-day of your job, assuming there is even funding for the travel expenses. 

The team at WaterOperator.org is excited to announce that free registration has opened for the 2025 Virtual Operator Conference.

Over three days (February 4-6, 2025) participants can earn up to 12 continuing education hours applicable to their drinking water operator license renewal. We are seeking approval in all relevant operator certification jurisdictions, with updates listed on the event registration page. This free, virtual training conference offers drinking water operators a chance to learn more about timely topics, improve fundamental skills, and get support for specific challenges while earning up to 12 hours of CEU credit. While there is no substitute for in-person training, this online event was created to specifically target operators of small and rural public water systems who may not have the means or ability to travel. Conference instructors are technical assistance providers from the RCAP network.

Topics for this free, online event include PFAS, Excel for compliance reporting, cybersecurity, chlorine meters, how to create a flushing program, and more. Each session is delivered by a technical assistance professional from the RCAP network. Register now to save your spot. 

How to Find Free Webinars on WaterOperator.org

Our staff at WaterOperator.org work hard to make sure operators can easily find all potential training opportunities for their water or wastewater operator certification using our national training calendar. This calendar currently links to over 11,000 events each year, all of which are pre-approved for operator continuing education credits and many which are free. Whether it’s a training hosted by your primacy agency, the Rural Community Assistance Partnership, a subsection of the American Water Works Association, or another local training provider, we strive to list them all.

Given the increased demand for virtual training opportunities, we’ve recently created a tutorial to help you optimize your search for live, online training. We hope that this video will help you to more easily meet the training requirements under your certification.

Please note, that these opportunities all have a time and date associated with their registration. We do not list on-demand training in our calendar. If you require assistance searching for pre-approved, on-demand training opportunities, please email us at info@wateroperator.org.

Free Resources for Non-Community Water Systems - Recording on June 6, 2018

This webinar, recorded on June 6, 2018, introduces our free, 2-hour online course that helps owners and operators of public water systems with a groundwater well better understand how to properly care for their water supply. The course curriculum includes the basic science of groundwater, well mechanics, and source water protection best practices. 

WaterOperator.org Staff Interviews Illinois Small Systems

Top 2017 Resources from WaterOperator.org's Bi-Weekly Newsletter

2017 was a great year for the WaterOperator.org newsletter team. We not only reached our 200th edition milestone this past fall, but we also were successful in connecting a significant number of water professionals with useful and relevant resources, resources that could be used on-the-spot to solve pressing issues, or help guide utility best practices, or help water decision-makers plan ahead for their communities. 

While many of the events, articles and resources featured in our newsletters garnered interest, here is a list of our most clicked-on resources of 2017.

• A Water Security Handbook: Planning for and Responding to Drinking Water Contamination Threats and Incidents, US EPA This document provides guidelines for utilities to plan for possible contamination incidents, including sampling, public health procedures, and recovery.
• At the Confluence of Nutrients, Pharmaceuticals and Sustainability: Emerging Issues in Wastewater Management, University of Michigan/Central States Water Environment Association  This presentation discusses the effects of emerging contaminants on wastewater treatment and possible solutions.
• Sampling Guidance for Unknown Contaminants in Drinking Water, US EPA This document provides new guidance to first responders and drinking water utility operators on the collection, storage, and testing of potentially contaminated drinking water when the contaminant is unknown.
• Water Conservation Techniques For Small and Medium Water Systems, Florida Rural Water Association This paper provides thorough descriptions of water conservation measures that have been demonstrated to be effective for small water systems.
  
• The State of Public Water in the United States, Food & Water Watch A compilation of water rates of the 500 largest community water systems in the country (the largest water rate survey of its kind in the country). 
• Emergency Disinfection of Small Water Systems, Washington State Department of Health  Emergency, stop-gap measures to get water quickly to the public in a crisis situation. 

Did you use one these resources at your utility this year? If so, we'd love to hear from you! Do you have a favorite "go-to" resource to share? Again, we'd love to know! Our email is info@wateropertor.org , or connect with us on Facebook or Twitter. 

Welcome to WaterOperator.org

For a number of years, we struggled with an identity crisis. SmallWaterSupply.org was difficult to remember.

I’ve been to countless meetings where I show the site to someone and five minutes later they cannot remember the URL. It just doesn’t roll off your tongue. And in the online world, you want things to be as easy to remember as possible.

It happened so many times, it became sort of a running joke.

The final straw for me was sitting in a room of 200 people and listening to at least three people in a row butcher the name of our website. It was not their fault though. It was our fault and we're ready to make it right.

We are proud to announce that SmallWaterSupply.org has become WaterOperator.org. We believe this change will address many of the issues we faced in gaining traction as an invaluable web portal, though there is of course still work to do!

Why WaterOperator.org?  When we first began to consider this change, I had been working with WEF on some projects and learned how they were planning to go away from the word “wastewater operator”. Their logic was that both drinking water and wastewater operators are treating water, just some are doing so before the tap and some are doing it after. I totally agreed. And let's face it, for many small systems, they are on both.

We were shocked that WaterOperator.org was an available URL, and the rest, as they say, is history.

What you'll find is that most of our features remain, but are just wrapped in a pretty new package. Our flagship tools, the event calendar and document database, made the journey successfully and are now mobile-responsive along with the rest of the site.

It's not perfect yet, but we're getting there. We're developing new help videos to offer visitors a tour as well as upgrading our resource databases on operator training programs and tribal partner contacts.

There are a lot of people here at the Illinois Water Survey and Illinois Water Resources Center that deserve the credit for this transition. My one contribution was insisting that the Paw Paw, Michigan water tower remain on the home page. (I'm sort of old school in that regard.)

I hope you like the changes we've made thus far. We're open to hearing any feedback you may have as we continue to improve new WaterOperator.org and make it your home on the web.