Have you attended an MRWA Conference lately? It might just save your system $$. Brad Rayburn, Circuit Rider III A few years ago, while working as an operator in southeast Missouri for Wayne County PWSD #4, Missouri Rural Water Association (MRWA) Circuit Rider Billy Everett invited me to attend the Fall Operations & Maintenance Symposium at the Lake of the Ozarks. I don’t remember my exact response, but I recall saying something like “I am too busy.” “The water board won’t let me go.” “I can’t find anyone to work for me.” “I go to the Bootheel Expo,” or “I have enough hours.” The primary reason I felt I did not need to attend the conference at the Lake was because the Bootheel Expo provided me with valuable training. It gave me the opportunity to meet other water/wastewater specialists and learn about new products that the vendors exhibited at the Expo. I assumed that the fall and spring conferences provided similar information as the Bootheel Expo, but I was wrong. In 2009, I attended my first Fall Operations & Maintenance Symposium at the Lake as an employee of MRWA. That was when I first realized that each MRWA conference uniquely offers something different than the others. While working with water/wastewater systems, I encourage water/wastewater specialists, office professionals, and Board/Council members to attend MRWA conferences. Whether it be by attending a session, visiting a vendor, or having a conversation with someone that’s “Been there and done that,” attending an MRWA conference could possibly save your water or wastewater system thousands…even millions of dollars. In fact, that’s where this article is headed. This is one such story of an operator who attended an MRWA conference and learned how to save his system money. A lot of it. Exhibit Hall at the MRWA Fall Conferences. Campana Hall, Lodge of Four Seasons.
Bertrand, located in Mississippi County in southeast Missouri, has 3 full-time and 2 part-time employees. Since 2012, Michael Hise has been one of those full-time employees. After employment with the city for a couple years, Michael was certified in water, and then certified in wastewater. In 2016, he attended his first MRWA Annual Conference in Branson. While there, he learned about a product that could be applied to the wastewater lagoon that would reduce the lagoon’s ammonia levels. Little did he know at the time that this product would save Bertrand (a small municipal system with 303 connections serving only those within the city limits) over $2,000,000. At the time of his first conference attendance, Michael had worked for the City of Bertrand for four years, and during that time, the wastewater system had always been under violation of its wastewater permit due to the lagoon’s high ammonia levels. Bertrand had consulted with an engineer to determine what could be done to get the lagoon back into compliance with the Missouri Department of Natural Resource (MoDNR), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The options included the following: • Purchase land so that the discharge water from the lagoon could be land applied. • Purchase land to make the lagoon larger. • Pump the wastewater 10 miles to the City of Miner for treatment.
One of the landowners would not sell his land, nor would he allow the city to apply water from the lagoon onto the property. The other landowner wanted $10,000 an acre for property the system needed to make the lagoon larger. It was decided to be too costly to install the piping and lift stations to pump the wastewater to Miner, (continued on next page) 35