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NEIWPCC Developing Updated Version of WWTP Staffing Guide
by John Murphy, NEIWPCC
For any business, determining the precise nature of its workforce needs is not easy, and it’s certainly no different for a municipal wastewater treatment plant. How many operators are necessary? How many maintenance personnel? The need for accurate answers to such questions is particularly acute now, with many plants having trouble finding qualified job candidates while simultaneously facing budget cuts from their communities.
To help with the proper identification of workforce needs, NEIWPCC has begun the process of updating Estimating Staffing for Municipal Wastewater Treatment Facilities, an EPA guide for the operation of publicly owned treatment works published in 1973. The new version will reflect the many changes in the wastewater field since the first edition. For instance, there are now labor-saving computer applications and telemetry, which did not exist in the 1970s, and new treatment processes, such as sequencing batch reactors. Process control techniques and the effective handling of residuals are commonplace now, which they certainly weren’t in the 1970s. Even some technologies that did exist 30 years ago—rotating biological contactors, oxidation canals, and aerated lagoons, for example—weren’t adequately addressed in the 1973 guide. In the new version, they will be.
Overseeing the preparation of the guide is an advisory committee made up of NEIWPCC staff, regional 104(g) members, contract service providers, and superintendents from wastewater treatment facilities. This group has already reviewed and commented on the first draft of charts developed for the guide. The charts, which graphically display workforce needs, will undergo further refinement during a pilot study now underway with plants throughout New England. The study will help us fine-tune the charts and locate any inadequacies within them, and allow chief operators to weigh in on appropriate staffing levels.
The guide is expected to be completed in the fall of 2007, and made available for use by municipal WWTP managers, municipal officials and town managers, consultants, contract service providers, and federal and state technical assistance providers. Once published, the guide will provide easy access to information that should help reduce inadequate WWTP staffing, which has been identified by EPA as one of the top causes of permit non-compliance.
John Murphy is a NEIWPCC Environmental Engineer and the coordinator of the development of the staffing guide.