of the wastewater treatment for our area with the b p w and we're really excited to have him here this morning and we hope to give you a little inside look into something that you may have kind of taken for granted all these years so first we're going to head to that head works mechanical treatment so what we're really doing there is removing the in already in the materials that can damage our equipment so we have mechanical bar screens a remove about anything bigger than a quarter inch so that's going to you know take out any rags that may be in there any plastics larger stones those type of things from there it goes to a great removal system which removes all the smaller sand and gravel that's in there but what we're really trying to do is protect the mixers in our tanks they'll get bound up in rags protect the pumps they'll get plugged with the rags or the grit the grit will also wear the mechanical components of a pump so it's really saving that equipment to make it more reliable and ultimately there are communities that have foam parts of cars in their sewer lines before oh my goodness it's amazing yeah but you do have to protect all that equipment so it can do the job it needs to do correct and after it goes through all of that once it goes these four tanks from here which are called primary clarifiers and what they are is essentially big suddenly basins so the have yourself that remains after the head works tends to subtle out moved off the bottom the fats oils and grease float on the top there's a skimmer system that removes those we want to get those out of the process because they really create a lot of problems with the actual treatment process so things out of those tanks is probably just a little bit higher quality than what you would get out of a septic system ok so from primary clarification our next step in the treatment process is actually called the activated sludge process you're going to ration basins in the purpose of their ration basins are you're trying to grow the right microorganisms to break down the sewage but that's really what a treatment plant is a mean if you think about it what we are is kind of a a league on steroids because what we're really doing is a natural process but we're speeding it up yeah ok the way we study that up is growing the right microorganisms  way we control that is by supplying enough oxygen so that we grow the right ones ok and then pulling off a nothing of the solids you have to maintain the right balance of the food to the microorganisms if that gets out phosphorous to get that as low as we can polymers will help settle out some of the solids but after that irrigation process and i should point out we actually have two different treatment plants here at one site but we really are almost two plants we have what's called her east point west plant they're divided by river avenue these plant is about thirty percent of our capacity in the west plant is about seventy percent of the primary difference of those are the east plant uses  just atmosphere air blower to supply the oxygen the west plant actually uses high purity oxygen so we are actually generating high purity actually taking it from conventional air to ninety to ninety five percent pure oxygen and feeding that it's so we get a better oxygen transfer efficiency what it comes down to is we can do more treatment in the smaller space that's the purpose of the system yeah because this whole system is kind of land lacks so you have to be creative correct to know how to get all that and speed up the national natural process in a small space that was a big part of the selection of that particular technology we are landlocked we don't have a lot of room for expansion so that was the technology of the time they could give us the most treatment the smallest area from the irrigation we're going to what's called secondary player fires they are pretty much like the primary clarifiers but now after going through then is killed with this infection we use bleach to disinfect ok and from there about water's sunda over to the young power plant where it's actually used as the cooling water part of the cooling water yeah this is kind of a neat little dynamic we have between the two facilities that saves this facility from having to decor and you know saving us costs and it saves the day young plant the amount of bleach they ok wow that's great that's a great process and really i mean i appreciate the way you describe it i can follow it and it's great to have an aerial view to see what this all looks like that we just kind of drive by and don't understand south the other thing maybe worth pointing out on here those kind of the liquid from some of the solids that are pulled off that's what some of these other facilities are and i guess as much as anything snow we have two different ways we handle that  most of the time in summer fall we are limes stabilizing it was basically to kill off any pathogens or anything like that and then it's hauled off to farm fields as fertilizer in the winter we actually do some  watering where we take it to more of a cake and that's disposed of in the way and fills and the landfills generally like that because of their known doing waste gas off the landfill our where you know biosolids from wastewater plant really do a good job of producing that gas so even the waste from a wastewater plant turns into a resource just start fires and for landfills that power companies b to get part of their renewable credits right christmas day they're all everything's kind of going for beneficial use and so the cells are going to beneficial use the waters going on in schooling water for the young plant yes we also in the actually have in river avenue they were put in a few years back we actually have water lines down river avenue for in the future when we take the treatment here to the next level where we can actually use reuse water for irrigation throughout the city oh it stays within our fence line but in the future we're looking at a technology called membrane bio reactor technology if we go to that then we can do the full reuse and actually send it out for people to use for your  water right correct yeah well we're really thankful for the water system around here this summer i mean with this kind of temperatures we've had and it's pretty hard to say it's a blade of grass alive right it's been an interesting summer y sure you had way more usage than usual on the water so there's certainly been much higher usage known people don't honestly think about a bit even impacts us here yeah because when the temperature gets higher system and a great weist water system in holland that doesn't happen easily so thank you for your leadership and now we're going to take a tour of the way wastewater treatment plants all stick with us this is going to  out the salads and points come out the grease and stuff what kind of problems do we make for you when we put that well put wrong things and what kind of wrong things you find in in the writer that you get here problems but those problems in the pipes and the stations and everything that get it to us probably the biggest problems we have out there one big one is wipes baby wipes changing diapers that you know those type of things don't get flushed you know whole i think most people are pretty good about having a jar or something to let the grease cool and board off yeah that's a good step absolutely so i know things have been pretty busy out here with some new construction and i know how everybody else does in that huge straight line wind storm was the other people that you had i'm ground here to  i never knew without a higher power lines dangling and a hundred foot walls hanging man all of that and i both people stepped to the plate to help us to keep everybody safe and to handle everything but we did learn some things about helping with  management and quantities of it and so can you tell us a little bit about what you guys changed out here what we've really changed out here of the big thing is new this new building you see behind us this the head works facility so this is where the flows are coming this tank here is actually a grid removal system that works by vortex action so the sand and gravel actually hits the walls goes down to the bottom and what you see here is a pump to take that out so this again is the equipment that really remove eight no nine we recognized out here that there were some hydraulic constraints that really were unacceptable for this facility so we will do some things to address that a lot of that work happen back behind us where the primary are we have one clarifier in particular that had a lot of problems whenever we experience a major storm event so we did some piping improvements and some control improvements over there so that we could pass more flow through those was actually interesting during that construction when we were doing that the one clarifier we always had a problem with we wanted to make sure the line was clean that we didn't have a place to get at it cut in a manhole to see you know to find a we hope to see you there it's to be really good