 Hello, welcome to the next installment of Junction City News. This is our second episode and really excited. My name is Regina Mahoney. I am the city manager for Essex Junction. And today I have Chelsea Mandigo, our water quality superintendent who is here to talk about the wastewater treatment facility and a little more specifically about stuff we don't want going to the wastewater treatment facility. So Chelsea, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Awesome. Okay, so can we start off, Chelsea, by giving our viewers an overview of what the wastewater treatment facility is? Absolutely. So I'll turn to some slides here for some pictures. So we are a tri-town facility which is pretty unique for Vermont. We treat wastewater for three communities, Essex Junction, Essex Town, and Williston. And together that we're designed to treat 3.3 million gallons per day. We average about two. And that is the fifth largest in the state, so the fifth largest plant. And basically what we do is we take naturally occurring microorganisms and use special equipment and that treats and cleans our wastewater and allows us to put clean water back into the Winooski River. Awesome. Yeah. Okay, so most people don't really think about what happens when they flush their toilet. And it's something that you have to think about all the time. Can you please tell our viewers what happens when they flush or run water in their homes? Yes. And I've got a great graphic to show that. So when any drain in your house that you flush or whether it's your dishwasher, your laundry, your kitchen sink, that all goes down the drain into the street into a separate pipe. And then that eventually makes its way to the wastewater facility. And at Essex Junction, the longest time it takes is up to a day in the whole three communities. So that's a little bit different than storm water, which a lot of people get confused and think that that also comes to us, but it goes into a separate pipe. So any rainwater that hits the outside of your building or your driveway will go into a separate pipe in the road and that doesn't get treated at our facility and that goes right to a local water body, wherever is closest to that street. So that's definitely a bit of a confusion that folks have. And it's important to know that it doesn't go there because you don't want to put things down that drain either that don't belong. So yeah. Great. Thank you. And so that's, particularly for Burlington folks, that's a difference from there. They've got a combined system. Yeah, Burlington is an exception. Yeah. But we are separate. Great. Yeah. Okay. What are the most common items that end up getting flushed that shouldn't be? Most common is flushable wipes. That is a really big problem in the industry because the word flushable is in the title. And you might be able to flush them, but they don't break down waste water. They clog our pipes, you'll see some pictures in a moment where they get stuck in our equipment. They call the operators in the middle of the night and have to fix things. And so that's the most common. Other things, dental floss. People put like, we found swifters recently. Those don't go down the drain either, swiffer. Femin hygiene products, all sorts of things, hair. Some funny things we found this weekend, one of the operators found $5 that went down the drain. Hey, all right. That's something. I don't know why people are flushing money, but we'll take it. We found some kids toys sometimes. So. Amazing. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, in thinking about this list, it's interesting because it's certainly a problem when it reaches the wastewater treatment facility, but some of these have to be pretty bad even within the pipes of your own home. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can have, putting these in your own home, it might not even get to our system being it's going to back up into yours. And that's on you to fix versus if it's in our system, it's on us to fix. So, yeah, it's important to also save yourself some money by not putting those things down the drain that can cause sewer backups and have the toilet go into your floor of your bathroom. That's pretty gross. No one wants that. Yeah. No one wants that. Yeah. Okay. So what happens at the wastewater treatment facility when these items get put down the drain? Well, they can cause clogs in the pipes in the roadway, which could result in it backing up into the street or even someone's house. It can also get into what we call our pump stations, which is just a centrally located area in a low spot of the community where the wastewater collects and then we use pumps to get it uphill to get us, get it towards the facility. And that can clog those pumps and then they can't pump that wastewater and then we get high level alarms and that could also potentially back up into people's homes. And then just getting at the facility in this slideshow, you could see a picture. This is I think a mixer in one of our tanks and that's all dental floss stuck on it, which makes it so that mixer is not going to work until we clear that off. So one of the not so glamorous parts of being a wastewater operator. But yeah, getting stuck in pumps, in pipes, in our screen, if I think, oh, that's something else. We'll go to that. Okay. I think. All right. Okay. So not only should you worry about things that specifically go down your toilet, but you also need to be careful with what's going down your sink drain and lots of what we cook and eat. So the next thing we're going to talk about is fog. Yes. I just want to back up for a second because we did miss this slide of the flushable wipes. Whoops. Oh yeah. There they are. I took this today even and there they are stuck on our piece of equipment. And so we have to manually pull those off. And when too many get caught in this specific piece of equipment, it can cause problems. It can go off track. So that's just an example. Those are just going to stay like that forever. They won't break down. We have to take those out and take them to the landfill. Yeah, we do. Yeah. Okay. So even though these products at the grocery store say that they are flushable, they do not break down in the system. Here's some examples. Correct. There's a huge campaign nationwide with several facilities or hundreds of facilities in the United States trying to work with for these companies to ask them to remove that label because it's costing people or even rate payers a lot of money because it's a lot more overtime or equipment failures. So trying to get the message out that these should be put in the trash and not down your toilet. Okay. Great. Thank you. But now we can go to the fogs. All right. That is fog. That is fat oils and grease that's just as bad as flushable wipes because of the two mixed together in the pipes and then you got a real mess in a solid blockage. So it's a lot of cooking oils that people put down their kitchen sink, which they shouldn't be because once those cool off they solidify and then the water isn't going to break it down because grease doesn't attract to water. So it's a real problem. In London in the 2000s they had what they called a fatberg and it was so large that they had to go underground with shovels and dig it out of their collection system because it's so big. That's a dangerous job. Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. Okay. So what should people do instead of letting these things down the drain? This is a picture of it at our facility. It shouldn't look like that. We shouldn't have a whole channel full of it. But so what they should do is put it in like a glass jar or something that you might be done with and let it solidify in there and throw it away or I like to use a piece of tinfoil you put it around a cup to put it in the tinfoil once that solidifies you pull the tinfoil out and throw it in the ground in the garbage. Saves a container. Yep, saves a container so you can recycle that again. So that's a quick little trick and that keeps it out of your pipes because that can also cause a backup in your own home. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. How has the pandemic and having more people work from home affected the wastewater treatment facility? During the pandemic, we saw a huge increase in the amount of flushable non-flushable things that people were putting down the train and yeah, we had to do a little education and outreach during some of that time in specific neighborhoods that we could pinpoint was causing an increase in some of our troubles and that actually was successful. We created a little flyer and people definitely took that information and made a change, which was good to see. But we just also saw more flow coming through our facility too with people being home. Right. And so that was really interesting to see the effect of that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's switch gears and move on to biosolids or what remains after pollution is removed by the wastewater treatment process? Yes. So biosolids is a very hot topic right now in wastewater and the management of it, especially in Vermont. So yeah, biosolids is the end product of wastewater treatment. So we've already cleaned the water and the clean water goes to the stream, but then we have this old material we take out, which ends up being called biosolids and it's full of all those nutrients that we are trying to keep out of the waterway, specifically phosphorus and nitrogen. We're trying to keep that out of Lake Champlain. So that ends up in the biosolids. So it's very concentrated in those nutrients. And so what we have to do actually, each person produces 47 pounds of biosolids a year that we have to dispose of. So that is a challenge we at the facility recycle it as fertilizer, but that is that programs under threat due to PFAS, which I know I'll talk about in a few minutes. Okay. Okay. So what does the wastewater treatment facility do with the biosolids currently? Right. So in this picture in the slide is actually the equipment that helps produce those biosolids and that's called the anaerobic digester and that is what breaks down that any harmful pathogens in that biosolids to a point where we can then use it in our recycling program, which we don't have a slide on, but I will talk about it. Okay. So we recycle it as fertilizer for the phosphorus and we have two ways of doing that. We have a partnership with a local farm, the Whitcomb family, and they take two million gallons, which is a lot, and subsurface inject that into their farm fields located at the end of the street that we are on. So it's very convenient and we both have to take a lot of tests and pass the tests in order to be able to do this program in water quality. So we monitor groundwater in the fields to make sure that's acceptable. There's a nutrient management plan where we're making sure we're putting the right amount of this material into the ground so that crops can grow and we're not causing more problems. And then we have to certify that we meet all the standards from the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency. So we do that twice a year with him. Okay. And the other way we manage our biosolids all the other times of the year is we use a centrifuge which basically just spins the water out of the biosolid so it's a 1% solid to a 25% solid. And then we recycle that back up. It's hauled up to New York and Chattagay called and they use it as fertilizers for farms up in upstate New York. Okay. So you mentioned PFAS and this is one of the reasons why you have to test the biosolids. Can you tell me what they are? Yes. PFAS is the, it's a long name, I don't have a long name. The polyflornated substances but it's a chemical that doesn't break down in the environment. It actually is used for water repellent. So if you have a Gore-Tex jacket that has PFAS in it and stain removal like carpets have PFAS in it, even electronics. So it doesn't break down in the environment and we just used it a lot before knowing what harm it did. And are people still, is that being, still being used as a chemical in products that we purchased today? It is. Okay. I know Vermont passed some rules where they're trying to discourage that from being used in the state. Okay. But that's just passed this last year I believe. So. Okay. Still a lot of work to do on that part of it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So how did the potential new regulations to PFAS affect our wastewater treatment facility and the financial impacts to our municipal budget? Right. They're working, they've already set a standard for drinking water and it's almost zero. So that's why it's a challenge. And so they haven't set, the EPA hasn't set wastewater yet, but it's likely going to mimic the same thing. And because this chemical has been used for so long, like over 40 years plus, it's everywhere in the environment and so we're not going to have zero of every compound. So that's the challenge is if they make that standard or when they make that standard, it's going to change how we manage it. And most likely the recycling as fertilizer, even though it's a renewable resource, will go away. And we will have to dispose of it in the landfill, which is a problem in this state because we only have one landfill left and it's almost full. So then it's trucking it to other states that will take it. And then that's just a significant cost. The state of Maine banned biosolids two years ago, applying it to the land, and they have seen an increase of 300% in costs. So it's going to really affect the rate payers at the facility if we are put in the same boat. Okay. Yeah. Which I hope we're not. I hope the state works with the facilities on this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's certainly a challenge, probably certainly a challenge that the state legislature will be dealing with, all of the wastewater treatment facilities will be dealing with, and likely just almost like the flushable products that people can buy in the store, a little bit of something to educate us individually as consumers that we want to think about products that hopefully don't have the PFAS in them going forward. Yeah. So there is ways to destroy PFAS, it's basically high heat and incineration, but you cannot incinerate in the state of Vermont due to the greenhouse, or what they have for greenhouse rules. So it would be very expensive equipment that would have to install in probably some new equipment that hasn't really been tested fully. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So big issue. Yeah. Coming up. Yep. Okay. So this has all been very fascinating. Thank you for talking with us about this. Is there anything else that you would like to add? Just that wastewater is not only, we're not only cleaning the water for the environment, but also public health. So that's really important to remember. We still actively monitor our wastewater for COVID still. We participate in the CDC program. And so it tells you a lot besides just the water quality and also the health of the population. Which is really something that's pretty interesting, right? So we started that during COVID. Yep. And now we are able to see a number of different viruses and... Yeah. It's fascinating. Yeah. So it really sparked this new part of wastewater and there's a lot of research in it. And how can we use wastewater as an early indicator for a virus outbreak? So there's a whole network in the United States being developed on that topic and sharing ideas and providing samples so that more research can be done to various labs, whether it is the government or private sector. Yeah. We are participating also in a private sector testing. Awesome. Yeah. It's pretty neat to see. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. So we're a little bit ahead of schedule here, but I think that's probably about it. And so folks in Essex Junction or any other communities, we have just started this Junction City News last month at the end of May. And we have this time slot every 4th Monday at 5.25 and would appreciate folks checking us out and seeing what other topics we are bringing forward. So thanks, Chelsea. Really appreciate it. Yeah. You're welcome. All right. And I think that's it. Thanks for joining us.