Clean Water Works
CLEVELAND, OHIO: From the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, an in-depth and fun conversation led by Donna Friedman and Mike Uva on any and all topics related to clean water, wastewater treatment, stormwater management, and the people, projects, and programs serving Lake Erie and our local waterways and communities.
Clean Water Works
Wastewater Treatment and a "Garden of Bugs"
What happens when a mechanical engineering grad steps into the world of wastewater treatment? Travis Pitts is Superintendent at the Sewer District's Westerly Wastewater Treatment Plant. From his humble beginnings as a plant operator to his leadership role at Westerly, Travis describes the transition from shift work to management duties, the job's impact on family life, and his team's responsibility for meeting EPA permits.
Amid Travis's candid anecdotes, we explore the technical side of wastewater treatment, the complexities of solids handling, centrifuges, and maintaining a delicate biosphere of bacteria to "accelerate natural processes."
Okay, what are we talking about? Travis is nervous.
Speaker 1:Aw, little guy, Stay fine.
Speaker 2:Travis Pitts is the superintendent at our Westerly Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Speaker 1:And he looks like a deer in headlights right now, right.
Speaker 2:Donna asked Travis to join us today and she said would you be okay joining us for a podcast? And you said you would.
Speaker 1:I did.
Speaker 2:Despite, and I quote, quote it really seems like an uncomfortable idea to me. It still is.
Speaker 1:It still is it's such a good quote so my first question for you is?
Speaker 2:are you someone who is normally willing to do things that you are uncomfortable with?
Speaker 1:willing participant, just not successful, oh that would go really poorly for, like parachuting or bungee jumping. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like when someone asks you to do something that you haven't done before, even though you might have reservations about doing it, do you generally say sure?
Speaker 1:I'll give it a whirl. Yeah, you're like a try anything once kind of guy yeah, except for parachuting, okay, just. Not like a try anything once kind of guy yeah, except for parachuting, okay, just not that Don't have to try that. Airplanes are fine, but while you're riding them, jumping out of them.
Speaker 3:It's not a good thing.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's fair. Yeah, I feel similarly.
Speaker 2:It's rare that something will go wrong.
Speaker 1:But when it does go wrong, it actually had very few requests upon his deathbed. He was in World War II and he was like I jumped out of airplanes for your freedom, so that means you never have to jump out of one. He's like you promised me and I was like okay, this is a very interesting request, Grandpa Tom, but sure, so you know, I feel like I need to honor that. So not jumping out of an airplane seems reasonable. My cousin's done it jumped out airplanes my sister did it based on his experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're still alive.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good I'm not even afraid of heights and I still don't want to do that. It just seems like like it could go poorly.
Speaker 2:I guess I don't know what I would get out of it. Really a rush. You get a rush out of it, I guess are you afraid of heights?
Speaker 1:you're painting a house. I'm not afraid. You can't be that afraid of heights I'm not afraid of being on a ladder.
Speaker 2:I'm afraid of jumping out of an airplane.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just not.
Speaker 1:They're kind of different.
Speaker 2:This is kind of how we roll with things at the podcast.
Speaker 3:We'll get into actual questions. It's actually pretty comfortable. I appreciate this.
Speaker 2:So I was telling Travis, we are coming up on two years of doing Clean Water Works podcast. Can you believe it? Two years I think the first one was September back in 2022.
Speaker 1:We should have cake.
Speaker 2:We'll get a cake, but can we get ice cream cake? Yeah, sure, okay, whatever you want, sweet. But recently we've been doing interviews with people, several people outside the agency, so it's kind of nice to have an in-house Interviewing our staff again talking about different jobs here at the sewer district and you have been here quite a while, 20 years, 20 years Dang Started off as an operator.
Speaker 1:Okay, 2003. So did you like roll up out of school as an operator?
Speaker 3:Went to college at Akron.
Speaker 1:Graduated in 2002.
Speaker 2:I am. Is that what it is.
Speaker 3:The only female mascot. She has a pouch. Okay, so Akron has a kangaroo Zippy. Did you like going to Akron?
Speaker 2:I did. What did you study there? Mechanical engineering. Okay, so you were ready for Mechanical engineering. Okay, oh, okay, so you were ready for some hands-on yeah.
Speaker 3:It was a tough job market. This was not the field that I envisioned myself in, but it kind of fell in my lap a little bit, if you could say that, and really enjoyed the company, really enjoyed even though it was shift work. I enjoyed what I was doing, what enjoyed the company really enjoyed.
Speaker 2:Even though it was shift work, I enjoyed what I was doing. What is mechanical engineering? We've talked to several engineers about different types like civil engineering I don't think
Speaker 1:we've had a mechanical.
Speaker 3:I don't think we've had, so it's motion, it's gears, it's fluid dynamics, it's um power, it's anything that moves really gizmos like waves, wave motion, that kind of thing yeah there's a there's a lot of studies on the fluid dynamics and power water power.
Speaker 2:So you got to take physics, and oh man.
Speaker 3:That's cool.
Speaker 2:Were you good at that stuff.
Speaker 3:I enjoyed it. It was not it wasn't the most talented student. I would say I had to work really hard to get my grades, yeah. So the job market wasn't that great 20 years ago it was right after 9-11. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Everywhere I looked there was engineers that were being laid off, and so it was very hard coming out of college with very limited experience, competing against people that had five years. It was almost like the first department that got let go from a lot of companies which was upsetting to me.
Speaker 1:As far as graduating, that's like one of those jobs where you're like this is for job security and then you're like, oh okay, but that was sort of the start of the economic decline, right.
Speaker 3:So you just lucked into job here I had actually one of our old assistant superintendents, Ed Haller, who retired, I want to say 10 years ago, told me about it.
Speaker 1:Oh nice.
Speaker 3:I interviewed and got the job, and here I am.
Speaker 1:That's exciting. Okay, so you were an operator. And then what?
Speaker 3:happened. Operator at Westerly for about five years and wanted a new challenge. So I went to an operator at Southerly and learned that entire process and around 2009, they offered me the position of shift supervisor. So I was there in the shift office at Southerly for about 10 years total, and then 2018, I got promoted to assistant superintendent.
Speaker 2:Nice, so it was always a goal when I came here.
Speaker 3:When I first started, terry Meister was a superintendent at Westerly Saw what impact he had on the plant personality-wise, the morale of the plant the continuity of the. It was like a family.
Speaker 2:Kind of set the vibe for the, set the tone for the plant, as a superintendent he did.
Speaker 3:And it's still there, the vibe is still there, and it was always just if I could make it to superintendent level and be at West Joliet, it would be awesome, and so I am.
Speaker 1:So what characteristics did he have? That curated that culture?
Speaker 3:He. He made the operator and the plant itself. He made people feel like what they were doing mattered and treated people with respect and was just someone that was approachable, came down to visit, always shook hands with people. He was just one of those guys that just he was the boss and he knew that he wanted us to do the best we could, and everyone pulled their own weight.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. We're talking about Terry Meister, who was a longtime employee at the sewer district.
Speaker 1:Pretty much from the beginning.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure when he retired, but even after retiring he was still around.
Speaker 3:He was still training in the training department for a lot of years at the. Southerly plant in the training department for a lot of years at the Southerly plant.
Speaker 2:So when you went from being an operator to a shift supervisor, all of a sudden you're in charge of overseeing people. Big change. Did you have a natural affinity for that, or was that something you were?
Speaker 3:at. It's a tough gig, I think, if you're not a supervisor and you're like man, I'd love to be able to just organize and direct and get things moving. But it is dealing with people is the hardest part of it and I like it, yeah.
Speaker 2:But what are the big challenges with that?
Speaker 3:Personality differences, five or six people you have to work with and five or six different ways of approaching things, and discipline is another aspect of you know, holding people accountable, which, whether it's attendance or behavior, or it's okay, it's not my favorite part of the job. Yeah, that's tough. The technical side of the job is great you know, and just dealing with people is probably the most stressful part, but you get a good team around you and it's like things start to ease up and that's what I got. Right now. It's really good there.
Speaker 3:Good people, good community. We eat a lot.
Speaker 1:I love that we do a lot of food.
Speaker 3:Oh, like potluck kind of things, barbecuing and cooking out, and it's something that has been going on for 20 years. You see everyone every day there, so on for 20 years.
Speaker 1:You see everyone every day there.
Speaker 3:So it's not hard to do family type building activities. That's awesome. I think my biggest challenge is just to keep the continuity there. There's a lot of changes that are happening at Westerly, with a CEHRT project coming online, we have a new Westerly Tunnel to Water and Pump Station.
Speaker 1:And so just for our listeners, the Westerly plant is immediately to the east of Edgewater Park, sort of between Edgewater Park and Whiskey Island or Wendy Park. It's on the left if you're headed east. And then the other thing I wanted to bring up is you said the CEHRT. So that's the Chemically enhanced high rate treatment facility. Can you talk a little bit about that and what that is and why it's important?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's part of the consent decree. Okay, and the consent decree it's a legal binding agreement between the US EPA, ohio EPA and the district, and so there's lots of efforts on the district's part to contain CSOs which are combined sewer overflows, part to contain CSOs which are combined sewer overflows.
Speaker 3:And our project at Westerly is just one of many right. So we have a assist off facility. It was combined sewer overflow CSO treatment facility. It's been there for 30 years. So we took that old facility and we enhanced it. We added tanks to it, we're adding disinfection processes to it and we're also increasing the capacity so that particular system used to make, maintain or be able to treat 300 MGD, which is 300 million gallons of water a day. We're increasing that to 411 million gallons of water a day and we're adding chemical additives to help settle the solids out, so it'll be cleaner water. It'll be disinfected during the recreation season and we're almost doubling the capacity. Volume-wise it went from a 6 million gallon storage to about almost 12.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:So that means, you can handle bigger storms.
Speaker 3:Bigger storms and a lot of the times because we're doubling. We've doubled its footprint or volume A lot of times. We won't even discharge, it'll just fill it up.
Speaker 1:Oh, and then you can pump, and then we reprocess it back to the plant, oh, and get full treatment then at that point, instead of having to partial treat and dump out the CSO, yeah the outfall.
Speaker 2:Some more capacity. Cleaner lake.
Speaker 3:The CEHRT project is supposed to come online in 2025 early, so it's going to be like a shakedown period for a couple years where we're evaluating progress, how the chemicals are used.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Cleaning is a big deal with that because of odors. We're so close to the bike path, we're so close to Edgewater Park, so we have to be very mindful of our impact on the community there and what we're doing every day it's. We take odor control very seriously and very we react to it very quickly as soon as we get a complaint. It's like let's go find it because it's not in our best interest to have bad PR with that.
Speaker 2:What are some of the things that cause a spike in odors? Why does it?
Speaker 3:fluctuate. Sometimes it's H2S, is hydrogen sulfide, and it's a sewer byproduct of rotting or digesting material. Right, so H2S is present in sewers and so we do a good job with keeping things kind of aerated. But there's a lot of times when a tank sits, for example, that's dry weather, so we have grit tanks up at the front of our plant and we keep them. We call it charge, which is water, but water becomes stale.
Speaker 3:And sometimes just some of the odors start coming from that and it's like we have to continuously refresh or drain and clean.
Speaker 2:So if it hasn't rained for a while, things get smelly. That's when things yeah.
Speaker 3:Hot August, july. Really, we have solids to water in at the plant and so we have centrifuges and cake bins and cake trucks and so that's even though it's inside the building. You know it's a very strong-smelling building because of the dewatering process. You're taking concentrated waste and you know you're in a building, so it's like you better have good ventilation, right? Yeah, keep the door shut. That's another big thing, keeping the overhead door shut so that the odors aren't wafting out through, catching a tailwind and coming out into the park.
Speaker 3:And so it's just common sense things Like we have the equipment there, just make sure it's running.
Speaker 2:Edgewater is one of the more notable outfalls, the one that makes news a lot because it's right next to a beach. Do the enhancements have much to do with reducing overflows there?
Speaker 3:That's the hope. That's the hope. But a lot of times when that CSO release opens, it's a pressure issue with the sewer, it's just with the volume of water. So, between CEHRT and the tunnel that we're having come online which is actually online right now we're in the process of commissioning it there should be less overflows or less releases at that. 069 CSO point.
Speaker 1:The Westerly pump station, right off of Route 2.
Speaker 3:Right beside the Soapbox Derby. Yes, right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's that newer building that's on the northapbox Derby. Yes, right there. Yeah, so that's that newer building that's on the north side of Route 2.
Speaker 2:The Shoreway, the Shoreway, as we call it, the Shoreway, do you call it Route 2? Or the Shoreway, the?
Speaker 1:Boulevard. Remember when they were like we're going to turn this into a boulevard and then, it was actually a highway. Yeah, we're going to slow it down to 35 pretty fast down there oh yeah, they go to nice clip and then you have like kids on their bikes and I'm like oh my gosh so you worked as a shift supervisor for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, got some experience managing people. So how has your role changed since you become first assistant supervisor and then supervisor?
Speaker 1:superintendent. I'm sorry, I was like you're demoting him.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's embarrassing Assistant superintendent and then superintendent.
Speaker 3:When I first started back in 2018, it was really just kind of an eye-opening experience. Being on shift work for almost 15 years. You don't see that side of the business Dealing with permits and EPA, directly with reports, monthly reports, dealing directly with discipline, hearings, goals are a great thing that we had to deal with more often. Yes, and developing people.
Speaker 2:Do you like those management roles or do you occasionally pine for the shift work where you can be responsible for all that? I don't wish to go back on shift work, but I do wish, Because of the hours or the work, yeah, the hours, it's tough.
Speaker 3:You're working holidays, nights, weekends Every two weeks. You're rotating. That's tough, huh. It's hard on the family life. I've got four kids and missing their activities in the weekends and evenings was hard. But my wife was very understanding and she had like a little jib-jab head of myself at family gatherings. They'd put me in pictures.
Speaker 1:That's really sweet. I'm kind of sad, yeah, so but you know it's been good.
Speaker 3:And the big difference between working shift and working in the office every day is no one takes the work from you. My responsibilities are my responsibilities, and when you're working shifts, it's the next guy up.
Speaker 1:I guess I never really thought about that.
Speaker 3:Next guy up so it's like a handoff.
Speaker 2:You're like passing off a baton, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:This is what we're trying to get done, and keep working at it on the next shift.
Speaker 1:And now wait. So do you like that, or do you like having your own assignments? A?
Speaker 3:lot more accountability. I think you know it's not just, it's not our team.
Speaker 2:It's really me, my name's on the paper.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that part of it I do like that. You just have to. I had to improve my organization skills. I do like that, but you just have to. I had to improve my organization skills.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's probably kind of a. It's probably a different world for you too, because just like way more meetings and emails and everything compared to like being on shift work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I was off for five days last week. I came back to 350 emails.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did the same thing.
Speaker 2:It was terrible, and we do give tours to different groups.
Speaker 3:sometimes it's Girl Scouts, boy Scouts, different high schools different college classes that are learning about the biology of wastewater. You've been giving tours for a while, if I recall I remember it's kind of expected of you Do you like giving tours? I do. I do like giving the tours. Sometimes I get people that are really involved and really interested and they ask really good questions, and then sometimes they get some weird questions.
Speaker 2:There was one gentleman that kept asking me over and over again if a gun went down the sewer, would we find it A gun?
Speaker 3:Why would you be asking me this question multiple times?
Speaker 2:I'm wondering if you found a particular gun. Yeah, I said yes, we will get it, we will find it and we will turn it in to the police.
Speaker 1:Yes, we actually dusted for fingerprints before we.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we find a lot of interesting things like driver's license.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Wallets, things that come down the sewer that it finds its way.
Speaker 1:It does usually. Yeah, what's your favorite plant?
Speaker 3:Oh, I've only worked at two of them.
Speaker 1:Okay, so easterly is off the table.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so westerly is my first plant.
Speaker 2:You're right on the lake. It's kind of a great spot. Beautiful scenery Sunsets. Beautiful scenery sunsets.
Speaker 3:You see the storms over the lake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that part's really cool. Southerly is very busy, scenery sunsets. You see the storms over the lake.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that part's really cool. Yeah, southerly is very busy. A lot happening there. It's the center of the district's. I guess you would say wastewater world. It's the mothership we call it. But it sharpens your skills in there because it's so massive I think it's top five plants in the country, Biggest in Ohio, definitely it is. So you're talking 745 MGD or 735 MGD a day. They can treat. I think it's more now but it's a big plant.
Speaker 1:That's a lot.
Speaker 2:A lot going on.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite process? Oh, such a nerdy question. Just cringed, I just cringed to myself.
Speaker 3:Probably solid handling, probably the centrifuges. As far as an operator goes, it's consistent work, if you're all know. But we call the wet side, which is like the influence of the plant or the discharge to the lake or the river. There are days that it's like if it's dry you're kind of just doing your own thing, and then the rainy events you're hustling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but solids handling.
Speaker 3:It was very consistent. It was like even though it's stinky.
Speaker 2:Consistent. Yeah, so the centrifuges they're spinning, they're separating the water from the.
Speaker 3:They operate between 2200 and 2700 RPMs. We add a polymer to the sludge and the sludge polymer bonds and it's almost like a washing machine when you're on spin cycle. So you have the solids. They stick to the outside, your clothes stick to the outside, but the water continues on, and then it captures and pumps it out. That's basically what centrifuges do they're separating the water from the Waste the biosolids yeah.
Speaker 3:So we go from like and this is an interesting fact so wastewater when it comes into our plant is 99.5% water and 0.5% solid, 9.5% water and 0.5% solid. So your goal is to try to get that 0.5% half a percent of solids out, and it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy and several processes right Right. And we thicken it in primary settling tanks to you know about 0.25, 0.5%. Then we send that to some gravity thickeners. They thicken it up to like 3%. So it's still 97% water and 3% solids.
Speaker 2:It's just getting that last 0.5%.
Speaker 1:And are there trickling filters at Westerly there?
Speaker 3:are.
Speaker 1:And that's we don't have trickling filters at Easterly and Southerly right. That's one of the things that makes Westerly.
Speaker 3:That's a unique place.
Speaker 1:Cool, but easterly and southerly right. That's one of the things that makes Westerly cool, it's a unique place.
Speaker 3:Cool, can you explain what a trickling filter is? Yes, it looks like a silo. It's like a concrete silo with a dome top and we pump our water from a low elevation to the top. So we have a lift station inside Westerly and it lifts it up about 30 feet. And so inside the trickling filter are these arms, and the arms actually spray or rotate and they distribute the water over media plastic media and the media is it grows a product called zeugliel mass, and zeugliel mass is made up of bacteria and protozoans and worms. It's just all these things in there that are living, that take the water as it runs over it and they grab the food out of the water.
Speaker 2:So we are using being the uh solid.
Speaker 3:So we so in in wastewater.
Speaker 3:There's two main types of waste there's solid, there's soluble and non-solid, soluble and non-soluble, and so the non-soluble stuff will settle out right when we give it time and gravity does its thing, but then there's stuff that will not come out of solution and that's the stuff that you don't want to discharge the lake area, that's the stuff that we want to try to remove because it impacts, it promotes algae growth, it promotes bacteria growth, it actually creates oxygen-depleted zones because the bugs are sucking up all that oxygen in the water.
Speaker 3:So you're trying to reduce the impact on the lake, so we use nature's organisms that come into the plant and we're kind of like farmers of the bugs and we accelerate the process that naturally happens in the lake and in the rivers. And so the trickling filters, that material, that zeuglial mass, is just a growth that grows on the side and they're grabbing that food and they're pulling it in and they're digesting it and then eventually they get too old and they slough off and then new stuff grows up, and so it's part of the process, it's part of the natural cycle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like you're maintaining a garden. We have a garden of bugs Bad bugs, yeah.
Speaker 3:To eat the bad bugs. We take what happens in nature and we accelerate it. Cool yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's like one of the reasons why, especially with westerly being a slightly smaller plant still not small compared to a lot of plants but you have to really make sure that the stuff coming into the plant isn't highly corrosive or anything like that. So you're monitoring pH and all of that making sure that none of that's going to hit your living system.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's always a fear of toxicity. So when something toxic comes in the plant, you run the risk of killing our bug farm. So we have to with the way the plant's set up. If it's a slug of something, we'd be okay, okay. But if it's a 24-hour toxic load, we would be in a world of hurt. The bugs wouldn't like the toxicity they would end up dying and we'd have to refarm reseed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was at that conference and they were talking about setting up new processes and how you actually can seed processes so like they'll bring in like your bug farm, essentially before you start running a wastewater treatment process in some situations, and then eventually they'll be populated by whatever is flowing through the plant. But at first you actually do seed it with like starter kit.
Speaker 3:It's like a starter kit, yeah it is a neat, it's a resilient plant, you know we have our average flow is like 20 million gallons of water a day, which is kind of crazy If you think about it in millions of gallons.
Speaker 1:Oh, definitely.
Speaker 3:We can treat up to 100 million in the plant and, like Mike said and you said, it's the stuff that comes in the wastewater is actually usable.
Speaker 2:Like it's not all bad.
Speaker 3:So we take that in and we actually use. It actually helps to keep our population under control. We have a wasting process. We can't have too many bugs in a plant.
Speaker 2:So we have a population control. Population control, yeah Cool.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for coming in and talking to us, this was fun.
Speaker 2:That wasn't too bad. You seemed thrilled.
Speaker 3:It was a lot better experience than what.
Speaker 2:Travis Pitts is the superintendent at our Westerly plant. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. Does anyone ever ask you if you like to listen to Travis Tritt?
Speaker 3:Travis Pitts. No, I always tell everyone that I'm Brad's brother, brad Pitt.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like that.
Speaker 2:The singular Pitt, that's right. The singular Without the S.
Speaker 1:Right, We'll put that on the description the episode description Brad's brother. Brad's brother but singular or no plural.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
