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How Wastewater Treatment Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
0:16
Speaker 1: and Jerry just ghosted us like a catfish. The bank
0:21
Speaker 1: is how they put it, and uh, that of course
0:23
Speaker 1: makes the Stuff you Should Know from the abyss. How
0:28
Speaker 1: you doing, man, I'm just doing great. Everything is totally normal.
0:32
Speaker 1: Everything feels comfortable and fun, so I'm good. How about you?
0:36
Speaker 1: Have you done anything really weird in the last two weeks? Uh?
0:41
Speaker 1: I think a more legit question would be, what have
0:44
Speaker 1: I not done that's that's weird? What's the weirdest thing
0:49
Speaker 1: you've done? I'm trying to think like I shouldn't have
0:52
Speaker 1: said anything, because I really haven't done anything that weird.
0:54
Speaker 1: Have just been more like, um, I've developed this weird
0:58
Speaker 1: kind of I guess it's indigestion, which I don't get.
1:02
Speaker 1: I have like an iron constitution, but I don't know
1:06
Speaker 1: if it's because I've been pounding vitamins lately and they
1:09
Speaker 1: keep lodging in this one spot in my esophagus. I
1:11
Speaker 1: think there's a weird bend in there somewhere um, and
1:14
Speaker 1: so I constantly feel like I've got some throw up
1:17
Speaker 1: just sitting in the middle of my chest. That's a
1:21
Speaker 1: new development. And I've noticed that when I don't take
1:24
Speaker 1: vitamins it still happens. So I'm I'm kind of up
1:28
Speaker 1: the creek on that respect. And I know that's not
1:30
Speaker 1: doing anything weird, but um, I mean, I guess that
1:34
Speaker 1: aside from that and setting out box traps for coyotes
1:38
Speaker 1: and then eating the coyotes when I catch them, those
1:40
Speaker 1: are the two weirdest things, right, It's not bad. What
1:43
Speaker 1: about you. I haven't really done anything weird. I shaved.
1:46
Speaker 1: I shaved my head, but that was just because I
1:48
Speaker 1: was bored and hot. Nice Britney spears. Yeah, I mean
1:54
Speaker 1: I haven't. You know, usually do that once a year,
1:55
Speaker 1: and I haven't done it in a few years for
1:57
Speaker 1: some reason. So, yeah, it has been a little while
2:00
Speaker 1: you've been rocking the grown out stuff. I know. I
2:03
Speaker 1: thought about shaving my beard too, just for funzies, but oh,
2:06
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think now is the time to
2:08
Speaker 1: try these weird things where no one's gonna see you
2:10
Speaker 1: for six weeks. Yeah. As a matter of fact, after
2:14
Speaker 1: we get done recording, I have a date with you
2:16
Speaker 1: me to go cut my hair because I've got the
2:19
Speaker 1: COVID hair. It is really long, real, it's just out
2:24
Speaker 1: of control. You know that point where when you grow
2:27
Speaker 1: your finger nails out too far and they just turn
2:30
Speaker 1: that corner. Well, you wouldn't know it because you bite
2:32
Speaker 1: your fingernails, right. I quit biting my fingernails a while ago. Okay,
2:36
Speaker 1: so so maybe you've experienced this. There's a point, and
2:38
Speaker 1: it can It can happen within an hour where they're
2:42
Speaker 1: just too close to being too long, and then all
2:44
Speaker 1: of a sudden they turn this corner and you can't
2:47
Speaker 1: go like another minute with them being unclipped. They just
2:51
Speaker 1: feel so gross all of a sudden. That's how my
2:53
Speaker 1: hair feels right now. I think the corner of your
2:56
Speaker 1: fingernails turn is called the tip of your finger start
3:00
Speaker 1: wrapping around. Yeah, man, so, um, I guess we're talking
3:07
Speaker 1: wastewater treatment then obviously with all this fingernail talk. Yeah,
3:10
Speaker 1: and I gotta say, um, who did this one? Did
3:13
Speaker 1: Ed put this together for us? Ed did this with
3:16
Speaker 1: a high fever from what I understand, right, non non
3:19
Speaker 1: COVID related, we should point out, Yeah, he was just sick.
3:23
Speaker 1: He came through. He's doing Okay, he's on the mend
3:26
Speaker 1: um but yeah, he he turned this in. He's like,
3:28
Speaker 1: I I had a fever when I wrote this, So
3:30
Speaker 1: it might not make that much sense, but it did.
3:32
Speaker 1: I think it did, But I do we should say
3:34
Speaker 1: if you work in wastewater treatment. What I did find
3:37
Speaker 1: out doing supplementary research was that there are clearly a
3:42
Speaker 1: lot of like there are almost fifteen thousand treatment plants
3:46
Speaker 1: in the United States, and they're clearly a bunch of
3:47
Speaker 1: different ways to do it. Because I saw a bunch
3:50
Speaker 1: of other different stuff. So let's just say what we're
3:53
Speaker 1: going to talk about is one way that it can go. Yeah,
3:57
Speaker 1: and we'll probably touch on some of the other ones
3:59
Speaker 1: that you know people use, but there's just no way
4:01
Speaker 1: we could cover everything. And the other thing that I
4:04
Speaker 1: saw too, is there's a UM there's a real sentiment
4:09
Speaker 1: that the United States, in particulars infrastructure for treating wastewater
4:14
Speaker 1: UM is aging really rapidly, like we need to do
4:17
Speaker 1: something about it soon. I saw some some some watched
4:21
Speaker 1: all groups that we need to spend about two billion
4:24
Speaker 1: dollars to upgrade our wastewater treatment around the country. Somebody
4:27
Speaker 1: else has six billion, but everybody's saying, wait, wait, wait, okay,
4:31
Speaker 1: that's great because we're using really antiquated methods that work.
4:36
Speaker 1: They work pretty well, but they're having a lot of
4:39
Speaker 1: trouble keeping up with um. The jones with the Jones
4:44
Speaker 1: is yes, because the jones is now. Because we live
4:47
Speaker 1: amongst like plastic everywhere they poop and pee plastic, they
4:51
Speaker 1: throw stuff in antibiotics into their toilets. There's like a
4:56
Speaker 1: different world than the wastewater treatment plants where built to
5:00
Speaker 1: to handle like in the in the early and mid
5:03
Speaker 1: twentieth century. This is like a real opportunity to update
5:07
Speaker 1: our infrastructure as we rebuild it. So hopefully we'll be
5:09
Speaker 1: doing that hopefully. And you know what, two billion doesn't
5:14
Speaker 1: sound like a lot of money. I thought I was
5:15
Speaker 1: going to hear a number like one trillion. That's what
5:18
Speaker 1: I would have thought too. I was actually kind of surprised.
5:20
Speaker 1: I went back and looked, and now they were talking
5:22
Speaker 1: about the wastewater treatment. So I don't know if it's
5:27
Speaker 1: I know that some of the technologies are very expensive,
5:30
Speaker 1: and maybe they're saying to rebuild as is, it would
5:33
Speaker 1: be two hundred and forty two six hundred billion, but
5:35
Speaker 1: maybe to to implement some of them more high tech
5:39
Speaker 1: stuff that that has come along in the last few years,
5:42
Speaker 1: maybe that would be a little more high dollar. All right,
5:44
Speaker 1: well let's talk about low dollar, okay, by way of history,
5:48
Speaker 1: because at the beginning of wastewater treatment, well you can't
5:53
Speaker 1: even call it wastewater treatment, it was just calling It
5:55
Speaker 1: was basically like how we dealt with wastewater. We weren't
5:57
Speaker 1: treating it at all. The very most rudimentary thing that
6:01
Speaker 1: you still can see in places our outhouses and latrines,
6:07
Speaker 1: which trine is just an outhouse or an outhouse is
6:11
Speaker 1: just a little trine with a little a little bit
6:13
Speaker 1: of privacy involved. Yeah, and you know what, I was
6:16
Speaker 1: looking up out houses. They're still around. There's like composting
6:19
Speaker 1: toilets and urine diverters and all sorts of like hippie
6:22
Speaker 1: stuff you can get into if you want. But one
6:25
Speaker 1: thing I kept seeing was, you know, like there's always
6:28
Speaker 1: like a crescent moon cut out on the outhouse. Uh, yeah,
6:31
Speaker 1: I've seen those. It's like almost synonymous with an outous.
6:35
Speaker 1: It looks weird without one to me. So I looked
6:38
Speaker 1: it up and it turns out that back in colonial times,
6:41
Speaker 1: when um, there was a preliterate population. The crescent moon
6:47
Speaker 1: indicated that the outhouse was for women, and a star
6:50
Speaker 1: cutout indicated it was for men. The mystery from never
6:55
Speaker 1: had any any idea. Yeah, I learned that visiting Mount Vernon.
7:00
Speaker 1: That would be a good place to learn that for sure.
7:02
Speaker 1: And George Washington's just had a big cutout of a
7:05
Speaker 1: marijuana leaf. He is only for him. Yeah, he'd come
7:10
Speaker 1: home from working in the fields and Martha would have
7:13
Speaker 1: a big bowl, big fat bowl waiting for him at
7:16
Speaker 1: the end of the day. Very nice. Uh So if
7:19
Speaker 1: you're talking about twentieth century, you would think like, yeah,
7:22
Speaker 1: but surely when we got to the twentieth century they
7:24
Speaker 1: were really handling the sewage properly, not so at all. Um,
7:29
Speaker 1: just you know, it was well into the twentieth century
7:32
Speaker 1: when we still had suburbs with people living them in
7:36
Speaker 1: them with no sewer connections and outhouses and this was
7:41
Speaker 1: this is kind of hard to believe, but I guess
7:42
Speaker 1: in more rural areas. But that even says suburbs. Yeah,
7:46
Speaker 1: he made it sound like basically if you went into
7:48
Speaker 1: like um, I don't know, uh, Dunwoodie or something like that,
7:53
Speaker 1: which is a suburb of Atlanta. Okay, you would have
7:55
Speaker 1: found out houses in the fifties, which maybe that's true.
7:58
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, if you think about it,
7:59
Speaker 1: a septic tank is really just kind of a fancy
8:01
Speaker 1: ladrine pit. Yeah. But it's interesting too because in uh
8:06
Speaker 1: like six b C. There were places that, you know,
8:10
Speaker 1: it's funny because it seems like there's a lot of
8:13
Speaker 1: advanced thinking in ancient times that goes by the wayside
8:16
Speaker 1: for just thousands of years and then it comes back.
8:19
Speaker 1: But in what is now modern Syria, they actually had
8:22
Speaker 1: drainage pipes and stuff that fed wastewater from the outhouses,
8:27
Speaker 1: uh basically to the streets and rivers. So it's not
8:29
Speaker 1: like it was great, but it at least got it
8:31
Speaker 1: out of there. They didn't have a lot of follow
8:33
Speaker 1: through on their ideas. Great first idea, and then they
8:36
Speaker 1: were like, I just forget it after that pretty much.
8:39
Speaker 1: But hey, have you ever heard why things were like
8:42
Speaker 1: possibly more advanced or very advanced early on and then
8:45
Speaker 1: they went dark for a little while. I feel like
8:48
Speaker 1: we talked about this before. It must have been the
8:51
Speaker 1: Enlightenment episode, because it's them. It was the Dark Ages
8:53
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages when the Church took over and basically
8:56
Speaker 1: said science can can burn hell. Amazing, that works. Yeah,
9:01
Speaker 1: it's crazy. And then the Enlightenment came along and said, no,
9:04
Speaker 1: science is back everybody, and we started to have like
9:07
Speaker 1: sewage treatment again, which I mean not coincidentally, that's around
9:11
Speaker 1: the time we started taking sewage treatment seriously. And it
9:15
Speaker 1: wasn't just that we like got a lot smarter all
9:17
Speaker 1: of a sudden from the Enlightenment, which definitely was partially
9:20
Speaker 1: the case, but there were way more people, and so
9:23
Speaker 1: things like digging a hole in the ground, pooping and
9:26
Speaker 1: peeing into it and then once it got full, you know,
9:29
Speaker 1: burying it and digging another hole. UM methods like that
9:34
Speaker 1: just became unsustainable. Or putting all of your sewage out
9:37
Speaker 1: into the street, it became unsustainable just because there were
9:40
Speaker 1: so many people. Yeah, and there was poop and p
9:43
Speaker 1: literally everywhere in the streets and the rivers and the lakes.
9:47
Speaker 1: And the first um sort of pushed towards treating the
9:51
Speaker 1: sewage was literally just because the smell. Eventually they were like,
9:55
Speaker 1: this is terrible to live amongst. Maybe we could do something,
9:58
Speaker 1: Maybe we could throw some time or some charcoal or
10:01
Speaker 1: some sawdust on this stuff, and at least and it
10:04
Speaker 1: won't be safe, but we won't be like walking around gagging. Right,
10:09
Speaker 1: They're like, at least there are some sawdust on there.
10:11
Speaker 1: Some do something for God's sake. Sure, so they did
10:17
Speaker 1: do that, right, Um, But that's still it still wasn't enough.
10:20
Speaker 1: I mean, people were still just they they I think
10:23
Speaker 1: in our Great Stink episode, Joseph basil Get was um
10:27
Speaker 1: just revered as a saint basically for saving people by
10:30
Speaker 1: you know, diverting um sewage into sewers away from people's
10:35
Speaker 1: drinking water and stuff. But even still, I think he
10:38
Speaker 1: was also responsible for helping design some of the earliest
10:41
Speaker 1: wastewater treatment plants. But um still around the time and
10:45
Speaker 1: into the twentieth century, like there it was basically like
10:49
Speaker 1: here's a sewer, and then we're just gonna make the
10:51
Speaker 1: sewer come out downstream of our of our drinking water supply,
10:55
Speaker 1: and then problem solved. Sorry for Shelbyville, but exactly chew
11:01
Speaker 1: on it, Shelby Bill chew on our fecal matter. But
11:05
Speaker 1: but that was kind of exactly what happened if you
11:07
Speaker 1: were down river, downstream or you know, on the other
11:10
Speaker 1: side of the lake from this area. You know, you
11:13
Speaker 1: got their poop in your backyard and you didn't want that.
11:15
Speaker 1: So eventually people started realizing that there are things that
11:19
Speaker 1: you can do to make water better and then put
11:24
Speaker 1: it into rivers and lakes and streams and even the
11:27
Speaker 1: ocean and seas. And that is basically where we're at
11:30
Speaker 1: right now with wastewater treatment, which is we poop and
11:35
Speaker 1: pee and we flushed stuff into the sewer, and then
11:38
Speaker 1: the stuff goes into a wastewater treatment plant. We do
11:41
Speaker 1: some stuff to it, and then we put out slightly
11:44
Speaker 1: better than sewage water into the rivers and lakes and
11:48
Speaker 1: streams and and hope for the best. Yeah, that's right. Um.
11:52
Speaker 1: Some of the early things they also did was like
11:53
Speaker 1: fled afield with wastewater. Uh. This allowed sedimentation, which is
11:59
Speaker 1: the you know, the the feces basically settling, and then
12:02
Speaker 1: actually the plants can help out. The plants take up
12:05
Speaker 1: all that gross stuff as water that they used to
12:08
Speaker 1: grow and it kind of traps it in there, which
12:11
Speaker 1: is nice, But then you sell those plants to Shelbyville.
12:14
Speaker 1: That's right, But it still didn't change, It didn't make
12:18
Speaker 1: anything less harmful. Uh. As far as bacteria goes. So
12:21
Speaker 1: that's why typhoid and cholera and everything was a huge problem.
12:26
Speaker 1: And that's why wastewater maybe the biggest advancement in life
12:31
Speaker 1: saving device like that in penicillin our neck, neck and neck.
12:35
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, really, I mean, like just not being
12:39
Speaker 1: around water that contains all sorts of harmful bacteria that
12:42
Speaker 1: people pooped out. That's definitely going to improve your lifespan
12:45
Speaker 1: for sure. And that that whole thing about putting sewage
12:50
Speaker 1: onto a field and letting the plants deal with it
12:53
Speaker 1: that's actually still around. That's like a that's a a
12:56
Speaker 1: sensible way to treat sewage because not only do the
12:59
Speaker 1: plan ants you know, take care of it, but as
13:02
Speaker 1: it trickles down through the soil to the groundwater, there's
13:05
Speaker 1: all sorts of microbes and minerals and all sorts of
13:07
Speaker 1: ions that pick up that harmful stuff and that actually
13:10
Speaker 1: purifies the water. The problem is is once you get
13:14
Speaker 1: too many people, which can happen really quickly, that that
13:17
Speaker 1: soil and those plants get overwhelmed and a lot of
13:21
Speaker 1: bad stuff gets through and then you're polluting the groundwater.
13:24
Speaker 1: So as more and more people came along, we realized
13:26
Speaker 1: we had to come up with technology. We couldn't just
13:28
Speaker 1: rely on soil anymore. Yeah. Um, Massachusetts was a little
13:33
Speaker 1: forward thinking in a Woosta, mass in eighty nine, they
13:37
Speaker 1: actually treated sewage with chemicals. Uh. And this is one
13:41
Speaker 1: of the first chemical treatments for sewage in America, I think.
13:46
Speaker 1: And that would cause these solids to clump together and
13:49
Speaker 1: then settle out like obviously the fecal matter. Uh. And
13:52
Speaker 1: that was good because bacteria is more uh more apt
13:56
Speaker 1: to cling to the poop than it will to stay
13:58
Speaker 1: in the water. So that helped for a little while,
14:01
Speaker 1: and then for a long time after that they would
14:04
Speaker 1: just sort of dilute the water with uh, with clean
14:08
Speaker 1: water and say, well, it's this is as good as
14:11
Speaker 1: we can do basically, yeah, which I mean again, that's
14:14
Speaker 1: kind of what we're doing now. Whi's just the stuff
14:17
Speaker 1: we're putting out now is way better, um, way less harmful,
14:21
Speaker 1: and has way more stuff taken out than it did
14:23
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. But that's ultimately, that's what I'm
14:27
Speaker 1: saying that we're still working mostly on those premises. One
14:31
Speaker 1: is that you, um, you you allow sedimentation to happen,
14:36
Speaker 1: which is like putting sewage over a field and letting
14:39
Speaker 1: the sediment settle, and then um, you use chemical or
14:43
Speaker 1: biological treatments to filter out stuff that is left over
14:47
Speaker 1: even after sedimentation. And that's again that's that's where we're
14:50
Speaker 1: at today. It's just the techniques were using are much
14:53
Speaker 1: more advanced. Yeah. And I don't think we even said
14:55
Speaker 1: what wastewater is because I think a lot of people
14:58
Speaker 1: might think that wastewater is just something that goes down
15:01
Speaker 1: your toilet. Um. But wastewater is any kind of water
15:05
Speaker 1: affected by human use at all period. So there's uh,
15:09
Speaker 1: there's storm runoff. You know, rainwater is is wastewater. Um.
15:14
Speaker 1: And you might think like rainwater is beautiful, it falls
15:16
Speaker 1: from the sky and it's so clean. But this stuff
15:20
Speaker 1: is running through cities. It's running, uh and especially in
15:23
Speaker 1: cities because there's not enough dirt and grass to soak
15:26
Speaker 1: it all up. So it's it's taking everything on every
15:30
Speaker 1: urban city street in America and collecting that and taking
15:34
Speaker 1: it with it. So fertilizer, pesticides, any kind of agricultural grossness,
15:42
Speaker 1: road kill, I mean, just think about every disgusting thing
15:45
Speaker 1: on the ground. And that's what stormwater is. And that's
15:48
Speaker 1: why stormwater is treated just like it is, which is wastewater,
15:52
Speaker 1: whole possums, tons of possums. Guns Apparently what I saw
15:58
Speaker 1: one wastewater treatment explainer video and apparently a lot of
16:02
Speaker 1: guns end up getting filtered out in that first big filter.
16:06
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, because I think people like, I don't
16:09
Speaker 1: know if they're just murder weapons that people throw down
16:11
Speaker 1: a sewer drain. I mean I would guess so, or
16:14
Speaker 1: at least crime weapons. You know, it's kind of scared. Yeah,
16:18
Speaker 1: you'd like to think like that happened one time somewhere,
16:21
Speaker 1: not like that's a regular occurrence. That's nuts. Well, I mean,
16:24
Speaker 1: I say a lot of guns. I don't know how
16:26
Speaker 1: many guns, but it was enough for them to mention
16:30
Speaker 1: that guns show up quite often, right. Um, the one
16:35
Speaker 1: you were talking about, which is like all that that
16:38
Speaker 1: wastewater that goes down toilet's the poop and the b
16:41
Speaker 1: water that's actually called black water. I love that term. Man,
16:45
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make some black water. Yeah, that sounds like
16:48
Speaker 1: a like a hardcore cocktail that would involve Yeager Moister
16:52
Speaker 1: and the Doodie Brothers. Let's work it out here, So
16:55
Speaker 1: Yeager Meister okay, um, a little bit of simple surah,
17:01
Speaker 1: very simple syrup, orange juice, fresh squeeze orange juice. How
17:06
Speaker 1: would that be with a beta? Be awful with the
17:08
Speaker 1: ager moister, of course, everything's gonna be off with you,
17:10
Speaker 1: ager MOISTERA um and then a little um, freshly muddled basil,
17:16
Speaker 1: little star and ease. Perhaps that's the black water cocktail.
17:21
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's terrible. Gray water is not as
17:25
Speaker 1: gross as that by any stretch. This is all the water.
17:29
Speaker 1: And we've talked about gray water in our eco friendly
17:32
Speaker 1: episodes because a lot of households will reuse their gray water,
17:35
Speaker 1: the water that goes down your sink or your shower. Um,
17:39
Speaker 1: a lot of individual households try to recycle their own
17:43
Speaker 1: gray water. If you're uh, you know, one of those
17:46
Speaker 1: four thinking hippie dippie types. Sure, if you've got a
17:49
Speaker 1: composting toilet out house in your backyard. Yeah, but generally
17:53
Speaker 1: there aren't like big cities with huge gray water recycling
17:56
Speaker 1: systems yet to predict that in the next many years
18:00
Speaker 1: we will see those rise pretty pretty commonly. Yeah. I
18:03
Speaker 1: hope so I do too. I mean, it's definitely about time,
18:06
Speaker 1: like we waste water, like like it's nothing. Yeah, it's
18:10
Speaker 1: crazy how cheap our water is, especially in the States.
18:13
Speaker 1: You know. UM, there's also a couple of other things
18:17
Speaker 1: that if you're a waste I think they actually they
18:21
Speaker 1: don't call them waste water any longer. They call it
18:23
Speaker 1: UM water resource reclamation plants, which I really kind of
18:27
Speaker 1: drives home what we're talking about a little more like
18:29
Speaker 1: this is this is something you don't want to just
18:33
Speaker 1: pe away, you know what I'm saying, Like, this is
18:35
Speaker 1: important stuff UM, And so they're they're starting to use
18:39
Speaker 1: like that kind of nomenclature to to indicate how important
18:42
Speaker 1: it is. But if you run one of these plants
18:44
Speaker 1: where you work at them, UM, a couple of other
18:46
Speaker 1: things you're gonna be on the lookout for. UM is
18:49
Speaker 1: the um amount of pollutants that you're you have in
18:53
Speaker 1: your your water at any given time, the amount that
18:56
Speaker 1: comes through. And then in addition to storm runoff, black water,
19:00
Speaker 1: and gray water, you're also on the lookout for industrial affluent.
19:04
Speaker 1: And we should probably say real quick, um iffluent is
19:08
Speaker 1: what most people call wastewater all forms going into the
19:12
Speaker 1: treatment plant. Yes, not affluent, no, no, UM effluent UH
19:18
Speaker 1: is is all wastewater if you're not in the know.
19:22
Speaker 1: If you are in the know, Effluent is what a
19:25
Speaker 1: water reclamation treatment plant puts out. The treated water is effluent.
19:29
Speaker 1: The all the untreated stuff that comes in is influent.
19:33
Speaker 1: That's right. But I think if we say effluent, we're
19:36
Speaker 1: probably just gonna be talking about it in general throughout
19:39
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, and you know you mentioned industrial processes. Um,
19:44
Speaker 1: we should probably point out to that if you have
19:47
Speaker 1: an industrial plant manufacturing something, you probably have your own
19:52
Speaker 1: uh wastewater treatment system on site. You don't just dump
19:56
Speaker 1: all that stuff and say here, county or city deal
19:58
Speaker 1: with it. You have to clean that stuff first. Just
20:02
Speaker 1: in that really gross still gross water to the city.
20:06
Speaker 1: Probably depends on your mayor if he's spineless or she's spineless.
20:10
Speaker 1: That's true, Mayor Quimby, he wouldn't. He wouldn't let it
20:16
Speaker 1: happen because he was spineless. He'd let it happen because
20:18
Speaker 1: he was getting kickbacks for it. Oh man, my favorite.
20:21
Speaker 1: I don't know even know if I can say this
20:22
Speaker 1: on the air. Okay, should I? Do? You know the line?
20:27
Speaker 1: My favorite? No? No, I wait to hear it. We'll
20:29
Speaker 1: edit it out if you can't. All right, I can't
20:31
Speaker 1: remember which episode, but it was when everyone was freaking
20:34
Speaker 1: out about something and Quinby came up to the podium
20:36
Speaker 1: and said, calm down, everyone, I know, well, all we're
20:40
Speaker 1: all frightened and hawny. Yeah, that's right. I think that
20:43
Speaker 1: was the comment episode where the comment was headed towards Springfield.
20:48
Speaker 1: We're all frightened and horny, so funny. And then he
20:52
Speaker 1: introduces Professor Frank, and Professor Frank goes a good evening everyone,
20:57
Speaker 1: and somebody stands up. He goes quit stalling what he goes, Okay, alright,
21:02
Speaker 1: sit down. Oh man, I missed that show. I do too. Um,
21:07
Speaker 1: you want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a
21:10
Speaker 1: break and we'll talk about how this stuff is treated. Okay.
21:35
Speaker 1: So we've basically we've talked a lot about wastewater up
21:40
Speaker 1: to this point, Chuck, and I feel like we should
21:42
Speaker 1: talk about it some more. Yeah, And uh, let me
21:45
Speaker 1: point something out too real quick, because Ed said in
21:47
Speaker 1: here that, um, wastewater treatment plants is not water that
21:52
Speaker 1: you're going to end up drinking. That is not fully true. Um,
21:56
Speaker 1: in in water challenged places in the world. Uh, they
22:01
Speaker 1: don't like to call it this, but there are treatment
22:03
Speaker 1: facilities where they can go toilet to tap um places
22:08
Speaker 1: like Australia, Singapore, Namibia and then New Mexico, Virginia and California. Uh,
22:15
Speaker 1: they convert this stuff back into potable water. And it's
22:20
Speaker 1: pretty great actually because they've said, uh, it's shown that
22:24
Speaker 1: it actually has fewer containments contaminants than existing just like
22:28
Speaker 1: what you and I are drinking in Atlanta. Let's say,
22:31
Speaker 1: yeah for sure, because they put it through such a
22:33
Speaker 1: rigorous process that from what I saw, Singapore actually has
22:37
Speaker 1: to remix it with rain water so that it'll get
22:41
Speaker 1: some of like the local minerals in in tar War
22:45
Speaker 1: basically because they strip it. They strip everything out. It's
22:48
Speaker 1: just like water molecules and that's it from what they
22:51
Speaker 1: do with it. And the one in Singapore I was
22:53
Speaker 1: reading about. Did you read about that one? They seem
22:55
Speaker 1: to be like the leaders of the pack with this stuff.
22:58
Speaker 1: I think Singapore is especially challenge with water supplies. Yeah.
23:02
Speaker 1: So they actually, um, they came up with something called
23:05
Speaker 1: new water any W water and any W is capitalized.
23:09
Speaker 1: It is just a great great little like word and
23:12
Speaker 1: and spelling and everything. Um. But they also in addition
23:16
Speaker 1: to just coming up with like a bang up water
23:19
Speaker 1: filtration system or water reclamation system. They also had a
23:23
Speaker 1: bang up PR campaign and got everybody behind it. You
23:28
Speaker 1: totally do. There was a town I can't remember in
23:31
Speaker 1: um I can't remember the name of it in Australia
23:35
Speaker 1: where like they needed to do this and it got
23:38
Speaker 1: sunk because some people started speaking out against it. All
23:41
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the city council started turning changing their minds. Um.
23:46
Speaker 1: I think Malcolm Turnbull forced a referendum to try to
23:49
Speaker 1: gain favor with some of the residents there and it
23:52
Speaker 1: was just a big mess. But this paper was basically
23:55
Speaker 1: demonstrating side by side, you know, how bad it could
23:57
Speaker 1: be and how good it could be, but a big
24:00
Speaker 1: port of talking people into drinking water that somebody else
24:04
Speaker 1: peet out at some point or was contained poop at
24:08
Speaker 1: some point. Like you really have to be committed to
24:12
Speaker 1: it and have a united front and basically show the
24:15
Speaker 1: science saying this is harmless, there's nothing wrong with it.
24:20
Speaker 1: It's it's more pure than anything we're feeding you now,
24:23
Speaker 1: So just try and Singapore was apparently very successful with it. Yeah,
24:27
Speaker 1: you really have to do that. Um I saw other
24:29
Speaker 1: places where they say they try not to make a
24:31
Speaker 1: too big of a show of it. But sure, I
24:33
Speaker 1: think the opposite. I think you really got to like
24:36
Speaker 1: educate people so they know that this this water is
24:40
Speaker 1: safe and taste fine, and I mean it's it's a
24:43
Speaker 1: miracle of of modern technology. You know, it really is.
24:46
Speaker 1: It totally is. And um, I'm with you, Like, I
24:49
Speaker 1: think that's one of the things you need to be
24:51
Speaker 1: upfront and and transparent about not letting people find out
24:55
Speaker 1: the hard way. Yeah, a new water is you know,
24:58
Speaker 1: that's a great way to go because if you notice,
25:01
Speaker 1: new water sounds nothing like fecal water. No, no, it
25:06
Speaker 1: sounds like new coke. Right that hit. Yeah, So um,
25:12
Speaker 1: all right, let's follow this uh this stuff like if
25:15
Speaker 1: you um, let's say it's raining one day, we're standing
25:18
Speaker 1: in a sewer now chuck, Okay, you don't have it.
25:21
Speaker 1: By the way, what we're about to describe takes about
25:24
Speaker 1: thirty six hours, depending on cool. So we're standing right
25:29
Speaker 1: outside of a sewage treatment plant, a water reclamation plant,
25:33
Speaker 1: and we are knee deep, our glosses are on and
25:37
Speaker 1: we're standing there and all this water is coming through.
25:39
Speaker 1: It's raining, so there's um stormwater runoff. I'm sorry, I
25:46
Speaker 1: only have the one pair for him that's so gross. Um,
25:51
Speaker 1: and there's a possum floating by because because there's a
25:55
Speaker 1: stormwater runoff, maybe there's a gun over there. Um. People
25:58
Speaker 1: are pooping and peek, so there's black water all around
26:01
Speaker 1: us as well. People are taking showers, so there's gray
26:03
Speaker 1: water coming through. I could not stop thinking about corn
26:08
Speaker 1: when I was researching this. Yeah, like, what at what
26:11
Speaker 1: point does corn get filtered out? So about we're about
26:15
Speaker 1: at that point. One of the first things that all
26:16
Speaker 1: this water is going to do is go through a um,
26:20
Speaker 1: a pretty good sized fence, right, and that's gonna hold
26:24
Speaker 1: back all of the big stuff, the possums. The tree
26:26
Speaker 1: branch is probably a gun unless it's a real tiny
26:29
Speaker 1: little you know, old gambler's derringer, right, and all this
26:33
Speaker 1: stuff is gonna get caught up on a fence and
26:35
Speaker 1: eventually somebody's gonna come along and scrape it off, sell
26:38
Speaker 1: the gun, eat the possum, um, who do who knows
26:42
Speaker 1: what with the tree branch, and then um just basically
26:45
Speaker 1: keep it clean for other stuff. That's that's the very
26:47
Speaker 1: first step that really before the water ever even goes
26:50
Speaker 1: into the plant, it's going to pass through one of
26:52
Speaker 1: these grates. Yeah, or there may be like a vertical
26:56
Speaker 1: conveyor system. So some so, some unlucky individual doesn't have
27:01
Speaker 1: to scoop pop poop possums and poop guns out of water. Right,
27:07
Speaker 1: A clean possum is bad enough, But one that's been
27:10
Speaker 1: bathed in black water, that's not good. Man. We're making jokes,
27:13
Speaker 1: but God bless those people who do this work. You know.
27:15
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure, hats off to them
27:18
Speaker 1: because again they're keeping all of us safe and healthy.
27:21
Speaker 1: It's right right, So well, no I'm keeping money. Um,
27:26
Speaker 1: So we've gone through that first grade. Now there's another
27:30
Speaker 1: series of screens that are gonna pick out smaller stuff
27:33
Speaker 1: like you know, bits of tire or little um car
27:37
Speaker 1: accident pieces that run off with the storm water. You
27:40
Speaker 1: know I'm talking about were like, you know, there's this
27:43
Speaker 1: all sorts of glittery stuff in the road. All that
27:45
Speaker 1: stuff gets picked up and course saying that kind of thing.
27:49
Speaker 1: And now you're talking. Now you've got some water that's
27:52
Speaker 1: ready to be treated. Yeah. There there's uh something called
27:56
Speaker 1: a grit chamber. Uh. They can be horizontal rated or
28:00
Speaker 1: vortex um. The vortex ones are kind of cool ed
28:03
Speaker 1: called it a hydrocyclone. I think it's the same thing,
28:06
Speaker 1: and it basically just spins the water and slings all
28:09
Speaker 1: that grit and stuff, I guess a car accident stuff
28:14
Speaker 1: right out to the side where it's filtered out. Do
28:17
Speaker 1: you remember at like the County Fair or whatever, that
28:20
Speaker 1: that ride that was like that? Yeah, Six Flags had. Yeah, God,
28:27
Speaker 1: it was called the what was it called? But yeah,
28:31
Speaker 1: it's spun and then the floor dropped out from under you.
28:33
Speaker 1: Yeah right, it was probably called the Black Water. I
28:38
Speaker 1: can't remember. I did not like it, though, so I
28:41
Speaker 1: loved it. Six Flags had one of those times. Yeah,
28:44
Speaker 1: they got rid of it pretty quickly, and of course,
28:46
Speaker 1: you know, you always get these Six Flags rumors. The
28:48
Speaker 1: rumor was that some child didn't get slung out and
28:51
Speaker 1: like got trapped when the floor came back up, which
28:54
Speaker 1: may have been true for all I know, but I
28:56
Speaker 1: just I don't like a dizzying things. Yeah. The trick
29:01
Speaker 1: was to just keep your focus on something inside in
29:04
Speaker 1: the middle, like the person across from you who was
29:07
Speaker 1: moving relative to you, and that kept you from getting dizzy. Um. Okay,
29:11
Speaker 1: so yes, so, but you can if you were so inclined.
29:14
Speaker 1: And also I have to say, like reading all of
29:17
Speaker 1: these different steps, I'm like, this would be kind of
29:19
Speaker 1: a fun ride actually, to like slide through here. If
29:23
Speaker 1: you're small, it's like you were just a little piece
29:25
Speaker 1: of car headlight. To take it all the way through,
29:27
Speaker 1: that would be pretty fun. So, um, now you've got
29:31
Speaker 1: water that's ready to be treated. It's been um, the
29:34
Speaker 1: grit's been taken out, the big pieces have been taken out,
29:36
Speaker 1: but there's still plenty of stuff in it. And the
29:39
Speaker 1: water is very turbid, right, there's a lot of suspended
29:42
Speaker 1: particulate matter just kind of floating around making the water murky.
29:46
Speaker 1: And this is where it enters what's known as primary treatment,
29:51
Speaker 1: where basically, if there's any water reclamation plant anywhere in
29:55
Speaker 1: the world, it's going to go through this stage at
29:58
Speaker 1: least the primary treatment. Yeah, and um, I think it's uh,
30:04
Speaker 1: you know, you think about during the daytime, there's a
30:06
Speaker 1: lot more activity, so uh, these facilities aren't meant to,
30:11
Speaker 1: um like, operate at full board during the day and
30:13
Speaker 1: then be cool at night. Like they depend on a
30:16
Speaker 1: very steady flow. And you know, pollution can't all bum
30:20
Speaker 1: rush it when everyone goes and takes their morning poop
30:23
Speaker 1: so they have these um, these holding tanks basically where
30:28
Speaker 1: they can hold this stuff during the day that's coming
30:30
Speaker 1: in and just sort of balance it out and distribute
30:33
Speaker 1: it over a twenty four hour period so it's not
30:36
Speaker 1: the system's never overwhelmed basically. Yeah, it's called flow equalization,
30:40
Speaker 1: where if you imagine this is a river running through
30:43
Speaker 1: they keep very tight control over the volume and the
30:47
Speaker 1: speed and the flow of the wastewater that's going through
30:50
Speaker 1: the plant, and so when that flow is exceeded, whatever
30:53
Speaker 1: is exceeded gets diverted off to one of these holding
30:55
Speaker 1: basins so that when the flow goes down, they can
30:58
Speaker 1: move some from the from the holding basin into that
31:01
Speaker 1: flow to make it so it's steady basically twenty four
31:04
Speaker 1: hours a day. That's pretty ingenious stuff. If you ask me,
31:07
Speaker 1: I didn't know that it is. Uh. And then one
31:09
Speaker 1: more gross thing that we should mention. Yeah, we forgot this. Yeah,
31:13
Speaker 1: grease and fat um. You know, restaurants use grease traps,
31:17
Speaker 1: but there's still so much um industrial and consumer like,
31:22
Speaker 1: you know, think about anytime someone pours grease down their
31:25
Speaker 1: drain or oil down their drain in their house, which
31:28
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be doing it. That stuff ends up in
31:31
Speaker 1: the wastewater treatment facility, and it all loves to hang
31:34
Speaker 1: out with each other and congeal up together. And there's
31:37
Speaker 1: something called fat bergs that form, and remember the one
31:40
Speaker 1: from London. Oh god, yeah, they're they're horrid. It's a
31:45
Speaker 1: it's a huge, sometime multi ton ball of fat and grease.
31:51
Speaker 1: And apparently they're really good at attracting um uh, flushable wipes.
31:57
Speaker 1: Although you're gonna say the ladies, right, the ones that
32:01
Speaker 1: have like gold medallions and chest hair stuck to them, Yes,
32:05
Speaker 1: but the normal fat birds, the ones with glasses and
32:08
Speaker 1: buck teeth, they don't. So disco stew versus cletus a
32:13
Speaker 1: slight joke, exactly exactly. And I didn't know there's gonna
32:17
Speaker 1: be so Simpsons heavy. I had no idea either, but
32:19
Speaker 1: but yeah, I remember learning about fatberg's back in I
32:22
Speaker 1: think it was two thousand and eleven something like that,
32:24
Speaker 1: where London had one and and they were like, everybody
32:27
Speaker 1: stopped flushing wipes, and um everyone said, no, you can
32:33
Speaker 1: just get the fat bergs out every once in a while.
32:35
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's horrid. But they have to get
32:37
Speaker 1: those out, not just because the fat brigs are so gross.
32:40
Speaker 1: But like you were saying, that can really screw with
32:42
Speaker 1: the machinery in the UM in the water reclamation plant.
32:47
Speaker 1: So I guess that would be after grit potentially. Yeah.
32:50
Speaker 1: They go into these aeration basins and they basically just
32:53
Speaker 1: inject a bunch of air in the bottom of the
32:55
Speaker 1: tanks or not even tanks. A lot of these are
32:58
Speaker 1: open air that you know, we'll mention that later. It uh,
33:01
Speaker 1: it just creates bubbles and it aerates the water and
33:04
Speaker 1: that kind of just works everything free where it can
33:06
Speaker 1: float to the top so you can just skim it
33:08
Speaker 1: right on off and slap it on a roll and
33:12
Speaker 1: go to town. Yep. It's a great Mayo substitute. UM. Okay,
33:17
Speaker 1: So now we finally enter this primary treatment. Although I
33:21
Speaker 1: would I would argue that removing grease and fat or
33:24
Speaker 1: I think the acronym is fog, fat, oil and grease UM,
33:28
Speaker 1: that's part of primary treatment. But we'll say that it's
33:32
Speaker 1: step negative point five. We finally reached step one, which
33:36
Speaker 1: is where this turbid um uh water with all of
33:41
Speaker 1: this kind of suspended particulate matter in it is going
33:45
Speaker 1: to be dumped into a tank. Usually UM well, I
33:49
Speaker 1: can't say usually, but there's like two main versions that
33:52
Speaker 1: I've seen. One is a big round one, um, where
33:55
Speaker 1: the water just flows into the middle and then just
33:57
Speaker 1: kind of um slows down as it reaches the outside
34:02
Speaker 1: of the tank the or the edges of the tank.
34:04
Speaker 1: The other is a makes a little more since it's
34:05
Speaker 1: almost like a big swimming pool where the water comes
34:08
Speaker 1: in one end and slows down as it makes its
34:09
Speaker 1: way towards the other. Either way, the point of this
34:12
Speaker 1: is slowing the water down so that it continues to flow,
34:16
Speaker 1: but flows so slowly that all those suspended particles have
34:20
Speaker 1: a chance to settle to the bottom under gravity and
34:23
Speaker 1: that sedimentation like we talked about, you know, way back
34:26
Speaker 1: in the day, where they used to take sewer water
34:28
Speaker 1: and put it over a field as it was trickling
34:31
Speaker 1: through that soil under the force of gravity, that sedimentation.
34:35
Speaker 1: We do the same thing today, except we usually do
34:38
Speaker 1: it in a tank rather than a field. And then
34:40
Speaker 1: we also may use some agents to speed it up,
34:42
Speaker 1: like flocculating agents, which is one of my favorite words,
34:46
Speaker 1: maybe a good band name, I'm not sure. Um. There's
34:49
Speaker 1: also coalgulating agents, which is a terrible band name, and
34:54
Speaker 1: they'll actually do what um, what they were trying to
34:57
Speaker 1: do with the grease, which is kind of fluff it
34:59
Speaker 1: up or make it attracted to one another and and
35:02
Speaker 1: form larger solids that are way easier to get out
35:05
Speaker 1: of there. And after this primary treatment, the water looks
35:08
Speaker 1: pretty good, but you would not drink it because you
35:12
Speaker 1: would die almost immediately of a horrible, terrible death. Yeah.
35:16
Speaker 1: And the the key with these primary clarifiers, which are
35:19
Speaker 1: these main tanks that they go into it first, is
35:22
Speaker 1: there's something called settling velocity, and that's the speed at
35:25
Speaker 1: which the particulate is going to settle. And we mentioned
35:29
Speaker 1: earlier the flow rate coming in. The reason they have
35:31
Speaker 1: to be just manic about how much stuff is coming
35:35
Speaker 1: in there is because your flow rate of the time
35:39
Speaker 1: can never exceed that settling velocity. So, in other words,
35:43
Speaker 1: the stuff coming in can't be coming in faster than
35:47
Speaker 1: all that nasty stuff can settle, right, right, And but
35:51
Speaker 1: that nasty stuff does settle, and it forms what everybody
35:54
Speaker 1: calls sludge. But what I saw, Chuck, is that it
35:57
Speaker 1: is not the term of art these days. The current
36:00
Speaker 1: term is raw primary bio solids, formerly sludge. That's the
36:06
Speaker 1: full name of it r P B s are p
36:12
Speaker 1: B f s s Oh that those are different words,
36:16
Speaker 1: like formerly sludge is part of the name. Like they
36:19
Speaker 1: changed the name of sludge to raw raw primary bioa
36:22
Speaker 1: solids formerly sludge like Prince basically yeah, right exactly, the
36:27
Speaker 1: aret just formerly known as Frits oh man lright b
36:31
Speaker 1: yeah for real, Oh my gosh. So uh, things are
36:35
Speaker 1: gonna stink. There's no way to get around it. If
36:38
Speaker 1: you've been to a wastewater treatment plant, it's gonna smell. Um.
36:42
Speaker 1: That's why they're usually not close to residential areas, although
36:46
Speaker 1: there is one in Atlanta or on the West Side
36:48
Speaker 1: that's just kind of right there. Yeah, I've never smelled it.
36:51
Speaker 1: I haven't either. Um, it may be capped. Like if
36:55
Speaker 1: you get complaints of odors, then basically, if you get
36:58
Speaker 1: enough of them, then the city says, all right, we
37:00
Speaker 1: gotta do something here. Yeah, maybe we need to put
37:04
Speaker 1: a put a roof on this thing. It can't be
37:06
Speaker 1: open air any longer, or maybe we need it. And
37:08
Speaker 1: this is probably what they do. And the one on
37:10
Speaker 1: the west side is they they treat that air. They
37:12
Speaker 1: ducked it out and treat it. Uh you know, old school. Uh,
37:16
Speaker 1: they basically take a bunch of toilet paper rolls and
37:18
Speaker 1: stuff them with dryer sheets, like the old dorm trick. Oh,
37:22
Speaker 1: I remember we talked about that recently. I don't remember
37:25
Speaker 1: what episode though, how did we Yeah, yeah, um, yeah,
37:31
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it was, but yeah, yes we did.
37:34
Speaker 1: But if you work in one of these plants, it's
37:35
Speaker 1: it's not gonna It's not like working at a tulip
37:38
Speaker 1: farm in Holland. You know, it would be a nice smell,
37:43
Speaker 1: although I don't think tulips actually smell, but yeah, I'm
37:46
Speaker 1: sure it's still better than whatever everybody at these reclamation
37:50
Speaker 1: plants are smelling. But you know what, tulip farmers and
37:52
Speaker 1: Holland smell great, right they do. They have a musky,
37:56
Speaker 1: earthy odor. So um, okay, so yes it smells. I
38:02
Speaker 1: thought that was a cute, hilarious little like sidetrack included
38:06
Speaker 1: in this for us UM. But this water, though, chuck right.
38:11
Speaker 1: Once it's treated, primarily it looks fine, but it's not fine.
38:18
Speaker 1: And for a very long time, like that was the
38:20
Speaker 1: extent of water reclamation, you would scoop out the sludge
38:25
Speaker 1: send that that primary um primary treated water out to
38:30
Speaker 1: lakes and rivers, and then you go, jeez, why are
38:32
Speaker 1: all these fish dying off? What's the problem? And the
38:35
Speaker 1: problem it turned out was that we really needed to
38:38
Speaker 1: add a second stage of treatment that even though you
38:41
Speaker 1: couldn't see the bad stuff in there anymore because you've
38:44
Speaker 1: taken it out, there was still plenty of microscopic material
38:49
Speaker 1: that could cause all sorts of havoc on the body
38:52
Speaker 1: of water that you release this out to. And they're
38:54
Speaker 1: they're described by a term called um biochemical oxygen demand,
39:00
Speaker 1: which is the amount of basically living aerobic bacteria in
39:05
Speaker 1: this treated water and how much oxygen it will suck
39:09
Speaker 1: out of that body of water, growing like forming an
39:11
Speaker 1: algae bloom. And then as the algae bloom uses up
39:14
Speaker 1: all the oxygen dies off, um the the bacteria that
39:19
Speaker 1: eats those use up the rest of the oxygen and
39:22
Speaker 1: kill off a lot of fish and a lot of
39:24
Speaker 1: other wildlife in that body of water that you dump
39:27
Speaker 1: that sewage into. And so as they kind of figured
39:29
Speaker 1: out that there's this this this stuff you can't see
39:32
Speaker 1: in there, that's still a real problem, We've added a
39:36
Speaker 1: secondary form of water treatment and that's really improved things tremendously. Yeah,
39:42
Speaker 1: so let's take another break and we'll talk about secondary
39:44
Speaker 1: treatment and then eventually tertiary treatment right after this. All right,
40:11
Speaker 1: So where we left off was uh and and we
40:14
Speaker 1: should also say too that like there are probably out
40:18
Speaker 1: of the fifteen thousand treatment plants in the country, I'm
40:21
Speaker 1: sure there's are still some that stopped at the primary treatment. Yeah,
40:25
Speaker 1: I'm I'm positive too. But which is like, you can't
40:30
Speaker 1: like that's that to me is an ecological crime. It's
40:32
Speaker 1: an environmental crime. Oh absolutely, because it's so damaging to
40:36
Speaker 1: two water resources. It's just and in wildlife resources too.
40:40
Speaker 1: It's just it should be a crime. It's not yet,
40:42
Speaker 1: but hopefully it will be soon. Oh absolutely. Um. So
40:46
Speaker 1: secondary treatment is key and if you're if you're working
40:49
Speaker 1: at a modern wastewater treatment facility, then you're definitely gonna
40:54
Speaker 1: go with secondary treatment. I'm not sure the what year
40:58
Speaker 1: they started coming around it, um And actually I can
41:01
Speaker 1: tell you something. So yeah, they're the main process of
41:05
Speaker 1: secondary treatment is called activated sludge and it was developed
41:09
Speaker 1: starting in nineteen twelve. Okay, so there are still some
41:13
Speaker 1: that are behind the nineteen twelve barrier. Wow. Yeah, So
41:20
Speaker 1: in the secondary treatment This is where, um, it gets
41:23
Speaker 1: kind of interesting in a chemical way. You talked about
41:27
Speaker 1: the algae blooms, which are no good, so to prevent
41:30
Speaker 1: stuff like that from happening. Um, what's going on in
41:32
Speaker 1: this water is they're all these uh what's basically going
41:36
Speaker 1: on is aerobic digestion. They're putting things in there that
41:40
Speaker 1: can eat this stuff. Right, it's crazy like that. It's
41:44
Speaker 1: beneficial bacteria to the rescue, which is just wonderful. Like
41:48
Speaker 1: they're using. This is that biological treatment we referred to
41:52
Speaker 1: earlier where they're saying, hey, there's all this bacteria and
41:55
Speaker 1: all these other terrible um like little by products and
41:59
Speaker 1: things that we don't on and they're everything from like
42:01
Speaker 1: gasoline molecules to whatever um. And there are different types
42:06
Speaker 1: of bacteria, protozoa, even tiny tiny, tiny little invertebrates um
42:11
Speaker 1: that live in the water most most of the time
42:15
Speaker 1: are microscopic and they'll eat this stuff. And if we
42:18
Speaker 1: feed them this treated sewage, they'll make it even even pure.
42:23
Speaker 1: And that's that's the secondary treatment, which I just love.
42:26
Speaker 1: And we've been doing it for over a hundred years now,
42:28
Speaker 1: well most of us have been, I should say, yeah,
42:30
Speaker 1: And it's crazy to think about. When you look at
42:32
Speaker 1: a wastewater treatment plant, they have about these cool mechanical
42:35
Speaker 1: processes going on, but they're also growing, essentially and uh,
42:41
Speaker 1: living things there that are their little work buddies. They're
42:45
Speaker 1: their little cohorts that do part two. And they have to, uh,
42:49
Speaker 1: they have to foster life for these micro organisms, I
42:52
Speaker 1: assume on site. Right, Yeah, but from what I saw it,
42:57
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a self aiming thing. Right. Well,
43:05
Speaker 1: there probably are a few sea monkeys mixed in there.
43:07
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised. But from what I saw, with
43:09
Speaker 1: activated sledge, you're actually taking bacteria that's already alive and
43:13
Speaker 1: eating the stuff in the sewage. You're just fostering it
43:18
Speaker 1: by pumping air and more specifically oxygen into the mix,
43:22
Speaker 1: which mixes the stuff up but also gives them oxygen
43:26
Speaker 1: to like really kind of be powered by. And so
43:28
Speaker 1: they really go to town eating this. So not only
43:31
Speaker 1: do they break down during this activated sledge process, these
43:34
Speaker 1: these beneficial bacteria not only break down the stuff you're
43:39
Speaker 1: trying to get out of the water, they also multiply
43:42
Speaker 1: and create more and more bacteria, so that part of
43:44
Speaker 1: the activated sledge processes after being treated for several hours,
43:48
Speaker 1: you move that treated secondary treated water out and then
43:52
Speaker 1: you take the sludge that you let settle to the
43:54
Speaker 1: bottom and pump it back through for another round, because
43:57
Speaker 1: you've got all new bacteria that was produced in that
44:00
Speaker 1: last round. And so it's kind of like this nice
44:03
Speaker 1: circular closed system that is so effective. I saw that. Um.
44:07
Speaker 1: Usually at night they have to skim off some of
44:09
Speaker 1: the bacteria that's been produced that day because it's usually
44:12
Speaker 1: so successful. Yeah, and I think they even pay someone
44:15
Speaker 1: to stand there and go, what do you think of that?
44:17
Speaker 1: How about one more round? It's a miracle. Every every
44:22
Speaker 1: six hours after treatment process goes through, they just shout,
44:25
Speaker 1: it's a miracle. So we're talking about like bacterial membranes,
44:30
Speaker 1: like a sheet of bacteria that might churn through this
44:33
Speaker 1: one of these basins, or maybe an algae sheet or
44:37
Speaker 1: something like that. And you know, you gotta, like you said,
44:40
Speaker 1: you gotta keep this stuff alive. So the pH is important,
44:43
Speaker 1: oxygen eating like you were talking about. The temperature has
44:46
Speaker 1: got to be regulated. Um, you just have to make
44:48
Speaker 1: sure these these little uh, these little booger state healthy
44:52
Speaker 1: and happy. You want them to be happy as can
44:54
Speaker 1: be and as long as you're pumping oxygen there and
44:57
Speaker 1: making the pH the way that you want it or
45:00
Speaker 1: the way that they wanted, they're they're going to be
45:02
Speaker 1: happy and reproduce and multiply and go forth and spread
45:05
Speaker 1: the gospel. All right, So that is secondary treatment, and
45:09
Speaker 1: that is apparently it gets to the point where the
45:13
Speaker 1: United States has said, fine, dump it in a lake,
45:18
Speaker 1: dump it in a river, dump it in the ocean.
45:21
Speaker 1: It's perfectly. But then if you're if you really want
45:27
Speaker 1: to kick things up a notch, you can go for
45:29
Speaker 1: a tertiary treatment. This is just showing off. It really is,
45:34
Speaker 1: isn't it. Another word for it is uh disinfection or
45:39
Speaker 1: polishing um. And this is pretty interesting because you wouldn't
45:44
Speaker 1: know it, but there are tiny little things ranging from
45:48
Speaker 1: parasites to antibiotics, and we'll talk about all these a
45:52
Speaker 1: little more detail. To microplastics, like there are microplastics and
45:56
Speaker 1: some soaps or just larger plastics that break down and
46:00
Speaker 1: some of that stuff gets through these first two processes
46:03
Speaker 1: and there's actually plastic in the water. Yeah, I'm guessing
46:07
Speaker 1: Emily doesn't use plastics in the soap she makes for
46:09
Speaker 1: Love Your Mama, Plastics, No, Um. But I had no
46:17
Speaker 1: idea until I read this that that was the thing.
46:18
Speaker 1: But it makes sense so like that that I guess
46:21
Speaker 1: the exfoliating stuff. It's not all crushed walnuts, shells or
46:25
Speaker 1: anything like that. Like it would make a lot of
46:27
Speaker 1: sense to use all of this waste plastic or it
46:29
Speaker 1: makes sense, and I guess the strictly business sense. But
46:32
Speaker 1: these plastics that they can be filtered out, but they
46:35
Speaker 1: can also be broken down to this point where they're
46:37
Speaker 1: they're microscopic as well, and so if you're just doing
46:40
Speaker 1: primary treatment, you're sending a lot of those microplastics right
46:43
Speaker 1: out the other side, and that's allowed them to kind
46:46
Speaker 1: of spread throughout the entire food chain. I saw this, Um,
46:49
Speaker 1: I think it was a front line just the other
46:51
Speaker 1: night on plastics, and man, it was eye opening, Like
46:55
Speaker 1: we need to do an episode on plastics. I've been
46:57
Speaker 1: wanting to for a while, but this one kind of
46:59
Speaker 1: lit a fire under my butt. Um. But it I mean,
47:02
Speaker 1: it's it's just everywhere, and so much so that not
47:04
Speaker 1: just washing up on beaches, but it's in the water
47:07
Speaker 1: we drink, right. So one of the things they figured
47:10
Speaker 1: out is there are types of bacteria that eat plastics.
47:16
Speaker 1: So now they're trying to figure out how to cultivate
47:17
Speaker 1: those bacteria. And that's another thing to what what we
47:20
Speaker 1: were saying with that secondary treatment like activated sledge. It's
47:23
Speaker 1: not just one kind of bacteria. It's a huge microbiome
47:27
Speaker 1: of bacteria that eat all sorts of different things, specialize
47:29
Speaker 1: in all these different things. But when you have a big, huge,
47:32
Speaker 1: diverse colony, you can get that much more stuff out.
47:36
Speaker 1: And so there are some bacteria that eat my microplastics.
47:40
Speaker 1: Then I also saw and this to me is the future.
47:44
Speaker 1: It's um ozone oh three, three oxygen atoms put together,
47:49
Speaker 1: and that's that from what I saw, Chuck, it handles
47:54
Speaker 1: every single thing that you would possibly want to get
47:56
Speaker 1: out of water. Yeah, so with ozone, what they'll do
47:59
Speaker 1: is they'll send it in a tetrical charge through the
48:01
Speaker 1: water and these O two molecules disassociate from one another
48:05
Speaker 1: and then recombined to form ozone oh three. And it's
48:09
Speaker 1: just a kind of a superhero occident that does a great,
48:13
Speaker 1: great job killing bacteria. I saw it as more like
48:16
Speaker 1: a coked up John Belushi just running through a room
48:21
Speaker 1: or something like that. That's how I saw it, because
48:23
Speaker 1: it's like it just goes in there and and messes
48:27
Speaker 1: stuff up. Like anything it touches, it just starts to
48:31
Speaker 1: break down. UM. Because it's so reactive that it basically says,
48:37
Speaker 1: give me an electron, baby, and that whatever it just
48:39
Speaker 1: took an electron from starts to fall apart. Yeah. You
48:42
Speaker 1: can also chlorinate the wastewater. UM. You know we've talked
48:46
Speaker 1: about chlorination before. Uh. It works pretty well, but it's
48:50
Speaker 1: not like a disinfectant. UM, and the chlorine itself can
48:55
Speaker 1: break down into toxic substances, which is not good because
48:58
Speaker 1: then you gotta go treat that other tertiary methods and
49:01
Speaker 1: that's no good either. That's right, like chloroform I think
49:04
Speaker 1: is a byproduct of it. And then there's UV radiation,
49:08
Speaker 1: which takes a ton of energy. Uh, it can be effective,
49:12
Speaker 1: but it's really expensive. Yeah it is, UM, but it
49:16
Speaker 1: does work. I mean most things do not stand up
49:19
Speaker 1: very well the UV radiation or UV light. UM. We
49:22
Speaker 1: have one of those phone um cleaners, a UV phone cleaner.
49:27
Speaker 1: You have you seen those? Yeah? I saw those on
49:29
Speaker 1: Shark Tank many years ago. Oh yeah, So, UM, I
49:34
Speaker 1: can't tell if it works or not, but I think
49:36
Speaker 1: it's does. I realized it's kind of a matter of
49:39
Speaker 1: faith here, but it makes me feel good. Um. And
49:42
Speaker 1: then there's another one called reverse os moses, which I
49:46
Speaker 1: think deserves its own episode, or at least needs to
49:49
Speaker 1: figure in like a desalination episode or something. But it
49:52
Speaker 1: is um basically using a membrane that is so small
49:56
Speaker 1: only water can pass through it. So when you push
50:00
Speaker 1: sewage or treated water or anything um through this membrane
50:04
Speaker 1: on the other side, water comes out. Everything else is
50:07
Speaker 1: left behind. And what I saw about Singapore's new water
50:11
Speaker 1: is not only do they use that very expensive, very
50:13
Speaker 1: effective UV radiation, they also use reverse osmosis in addition
50:18
Speaker 1: to microfiltering to produce this new water, which is why
50:22
Speaker 1: it's like so pure that they have to add it
50:24
Speaker 1: back with you know, rain water to get some of
50:27
Speaker 1: the minerals back into it. Yeah, reverse osmosis works rejects
50:32
Speaker 1: I think nine percent of bacteria. Los Angeles and some
50:36
Speaker 1: other cities are using this, like we said, cities that
50:39
Speaker 1: have water shortages. Generally, it really depends on not only
50:43
Speaker 1: this membrane but tons of pressure UM up to six
50:46
Speaker 1: hundred pounds per square inch, very highly pressurized, and if
50:50
Speaker 1: you want to get what they're calling i p R
50:52
Speaker 1: Indirect potable reuse, which is eventually you can drink this stuff.
50:59
Speaker 1: I seen all kinds of problem. I mean, I guess
51:01
Speaker 1: this new water, that's what their aim is. But you
51:03
Speaker 1: you take your tertiary tertiary tertiary tertiary treated water, you
51:10
Speaker 1: hold that in a reservoir for a while, then it
51:12
Speaker 1: goes through osmosis, then it's treated with either UV or
51:16
Speaker 1: ozone or both. Then it goes back to a reservoir
51:19
Speaker 1: for about six months for just natural processes to go
51:23
Speaker 1: to go to work, and then it gets sent just
51:26
Speaker 1: through the regular standard water treatment that everyone else's water
51:30
Speaker 1: goes through. Wow, that's like l A's doing that. I
51:35
Speaker 1: think if if you're doing i PR right, then you're
51:38
Speaker 1: doing many of these steps in concert with one another
51:42
Speaker 1: and then sending it through the regular system in the end.
51:46
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are different ways in different places, but uh,
51:49
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing that you can you can drink water
51:53
Speaker 1: that goes down your toilet eventually, and it's probably better
51:56
Speaker 1: than a lot of city water. Yeah, oh for sure. Um.
52:00
Speaker 1: One of the things that that got me chuck um
52:03
Speaker 1: was that we still do that thing where we take
52:06
Speaker 1: that sludge and spread it over um farmland, create those
52:11
Speaker 1: sewage farms. So everything's kind of come back full circle again. Um.
52:15
Speaker 1: And we also use semi semi treated water for like, um,
52:19
Speaker 1: like like you're getting parks and stuff like that. So
52:23
Speaker 1: there's like a there's there's um a lot of good
52:27
Speaker 1: uses for for water that's not quite indirect potable reuse quality,
52:34
Speaker 1: but can it is still like good enough you just
52:37
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to drink it, yeah, or you can just
52:40
Speaker 1: dump it back into your local river lake or something
52:43
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, that's always great. And then the just lastly,
52:47
Speaker 1: real quick, UM, the future of this stuff that I
52:49
Speaker 1: saw is that they're getting so good at filtering stuff
52:54
Speaker 1: out that they're like, well, wait a minute, we're accumulating
52:57
Speaker 1: a lot of this plastic um, so let's start collecting
53:00
Speaker 1: it and selling it for reuse, right, which is which
53:04
Speaker 1: is wonderful because I mean, otherwise they're just diverting this
53:08
Speaker 1: stuff to a landfill. Or they're getting so good at
53:10
Speaker 1: getting like phosphorus or nitrogen out, well, let's make a
53:14
Speaker 1: sideline of selling fertilizer to farmers or something like that. Um.
53:18
Speaker 1: Rather than adding more to the water supply, will just
53:20
Speaker 1: reuse the stuff that didn't get used the first time.
53:23
Speaker 1: And then um, they're also reusing cellulose fiber from used
53:28
Speaker 1: toilet paper, and that amazing is amazing. So they're filtering
53:33
Speaker 1: out cellulose that was part of toilet paper at one point,
53:36
Speaker 1: and they're using it for everything from insulation to roadways
53:40
Speaker 1: I believe, which I didn't know they used cellulos and roadways,
53:43
Speaker 1: but by god they do now. So that's wastewater treatment. Everybody,
53:50
Speaker 1: one of those great engineering episodes that we do from
53:53
Speaker 1: time to time. I hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, I
53:56
Speaker 1: got one more. We always like to think of our
53:57
Speaker 1: friends in New York because that's sort of the gold
54:00
Speaker 1: standard of huge city doing amazing things. And there are
54:04
Speaker 1: fourteen plants in New York City alone, and they how
54:08
Speaker 1: many gallons of water per day? Do you think they treat?
54:10
Speaker 1: Just take a stab? One point three billion gallons of
54:16
Speaker 1: water per day? Wow? I was apparently the statistic I
54:21
Speaker 1: saw said, if you that is enough over eight years
54:26
Speaker 1: to fill the entire Dead Sea with toilet water. Wow,
54:30
Speaker 1: which you should not do. Don't do it the dead
54:33
Speaker 1: Sea special. Do you got anything else? They've got nothing else? Uh, Well,
54:37
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about wastewater, just show
54:39
Speaker 1: up at your local wastewater treatment plan or you're sorry,
54:42
Speaker 1: your water recap water resource reclamation plant and they'll probably
54:46
Speaker 1: give you a tour, especially if they're friendly types. And
54:49
Speaker 1: since I said that, it's time for the listener, mayo, Yeah,
54:54
Speaker 1: show up and say I want to see the artists
54:55
Speaker 1: formerly known as sludge, right but also doing a really
54:59
Speaker 1: like kind a hostile demanding way. Yeah. Absolutely, Um, all right,
55:05
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this from a teacher. We love hearing
55:08
Speaker 1: from our teachers here during the worldwide lockdown. Now that
55:13
Speaker 1: Georgia is finally on board. Yeah, they just found out
55:16
Speaker 1: that you could be a contagious and not show symptoms yesterday.
55:20
Speaker 1: I'm so angry about that. It's nuts. My daughter literally
55:24
Speaker 1: knew that before our governor said he did. Yeah, for
55:27
Speaker 1: probably a good month, I would guess. Probably. Yeah, you
55:31
Speaker 1: should listen to our show. We talked about it last week,
55:33
Speaker 1: well in real time, weeks ago by the time this
55:36
Speaker 1: comes out. All right, So this is from a teacher
55:40
Speaker 1: named j Alexander in the mathematics department at l h S.
55:45
Speaker 1: Good morning, guys. I wanted to thank you for the
55:47
Speaker 1: distraction episodes. As a teacher working from home, I've been
55:51
Speaker 1: helping my one and thirty plus students and their parents
55:54
Speaker 1: navigate this challenge while also making sure my two biological
55:58
Speaker 1: kiddos are doing their work as well. With the governor
56:00
Speaker 1: closing schools for the rest of the year, I woke
56:02
Speaker 1: up pretty sad this morning. I'm sad for my seniors.
56:05
Speaker 1: We didn't know the last time we were together would
56:08
Speaker 1: truly be the last time. I was thinking about that
56:11
Speaker 1: the other day too, man, Like, that's just it's all sad.
56:14
Speaker 1: But seniors and prom and last day's school and all
56:18
Speaker 1: that fun stuff is just to to miss that as
56:21
Speaker 1: it just sucks. Yeah, it really does. Do you know
56:25
Speaker 1: what they're gonna do? Is it like you're just gonna
56:27
Speaker 1: continue on the rest of the year from home and
56:29
Speaker 1: still graduate on time. I think everyone's just trying to
56:32
Speaker 1: figure this out in real time. Man, My own daughter
56:35
Speaker 1: is graduating from her preschool, so she's not going to
56:37
Speaker 1: see a lot of these kids ever. Again, just super sad.
56:41
Speaker 1: That's sad, but also congratulations. Yeah, well they're they're doing
56:44
Speaker 1: these uh two times a week, these zoom meetings, which
56:47
Speaker 1: is kind of fun to see all these kids on there,
56:49
Speaker 1: I'll bet just crawling around not paying attention. They're actually
56:52
Speaker 1: pretty locked in. It's it's very impressive. Oh really, Yeah,
56:56
Speaker 1: their teachers are on there and they kind of are
56:57
Speaker 1: in a rhythm. It's it's kind of cool to see.
56:59
Speaker 1: That's cool, all right, so let's just continue here. I'm
57:01
Speaker 1: sad for my own kids who won't see their friends
57:03
Speaker 1: and teachers for the rest of the school year. I'm
57:06
Speaker 1: sad for all my coworkers who are retiring this year.
57:09
Speaker 1: They didn't plan for it to end this way, although
57:12
Speaker 1: quite frankly, they may be pretty stumped early retirement. Uh,
57:18
Speaker 1: they're definitely silver lining, zough. I'm seven months pregnant and
57:20
Speaker 1: don't mind working in my pajamas. The weather is great
57:23
Speaker 1: in your podcast is keeping me sane. So thank you
57:25
Speaker 1: all so much for being my normal in this twilight
57:28
Speaker 1: zone world. I pray that you and your families are
57:30
Speaker 1: safe and healthy. And again, that is J Alexander the
57:34
Speaker 1: letter J from the Mathematics department at l h S
57:38
Speaker 1: and right back at you two from us to you, um,
57:42
Speaker 1: thank you very much, and thanks to everybody out there
57:44
Speaker 1: sending us good vibes. We're sending them right back out
57:48
Speaker 1: to the entire world. It's basically like a d light
57:51
Speaker 1: concert in here. That's right. If you want to get
57:54
Speaker 1: in touch with us during this weird time or any time,
57:57
Speaker 1: you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
58:00
Speaker 1: it on the bottom, hit it with the lysol wipe,
58:03
Speaker 1: and send it to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot
58:07
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58:12
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58:15
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