Wastewater Treatment Facility

Date: Tuesday November 9, 2010
Place: Wastewater Treatment Facility, Franklin New Hampshire 
Weather: Drizzling/ Raining/ Overcast


Today, we went to visit the Wastewater Treatment Facility in Franklin, NH. It was a little smelly at first but after you got over that it was fine. Our tour guild was Ken Noyes the Chief Operator of the plant. Ken has been working at the facility for 22 years. The plant in Franklin process waist from a large portion of the Lakes Region.(See Picture 1) The water that comes, mostly residential, in stays for about 13 hours in total to be processed. 

Picture 1

The water enters the plant at the Headworks(A). At the Headworks most of the suspended solids are taken out of the water. This is done by taking the water from a speed of about 3ft per second down to 2ft per seconds. 


After the Headworks, the water goes on to the Primary Clarifiers(B). Here the settleable solids are taken out of the water. The water enters in the middle of the big round tank and slowly travels to the outside where it leaves. Here about 60% -65 % of the settleable solids are removed and between 35% and 40% of BOD's. BOD or Biochemical Oxygen Demands is the amount of oxygen that pathogens need to survive in the water.  When we watching the tank there were about six sea gulls sitting on the sweeping arm, witch skims the remaining floating solids out of the water, eating some of the solids. When we asked Ken about it he told us simply that: "Sea gulls are nasty birds." 



From the Primary Clarifiers the water goes onto the Aeration Tanks(C), witch is the main treatment unit, where lots of air is put in to the water along with microorganisms or "bugs" to remove the organic content. The "bugs" work hard to get the dissolved solids out the water. The water will spend 6 hours here being cleaned by the workers. In the summer time less "bugs "are needed than during the cold winters. If the number of "bugs"falls below the legal limit then they go to other wastewater plants and take some of their bugs to help boost their population. When the "bugs" have done their work they are then sucked off the bottom of the tank to be used again. Ken told us that if he was going fall into one of the tanks it would not be one of these because the aeration process makes it impossible to swim. 


After the Aeration Tank the water goes to the Secondary Clarifiers(D). This is another big round tank that looks a lot like the Primary Clarifiers. This tank removes the residual solids. These solids are because of the microorganisms in the aeration tanks. 




The last stop for the water before it goes back to the river is the Disinfection System(E). In this building the water looks just like "Mountain Dew," according to ken, because of the UV lights. The UV system was put in place in 1997. Prior to this the plant used chlorine tablets. The chlorine system is still in place for high flow times. From here the water flows right into the Merrimack River. The water that we saw flowing out of the Disinfection system was very different from the water we saw entering the headworks. The water at the beginning was a dark grey almost black color and smelled like sewage and the water we saw leaving was clear and looked and smelled just like normal river water. 

At the end Ken told us: "I love the work I do, I love cleaning the rivers." This was very satisfying to hear. The entire time that Ken was talking to us he seamed excited about what he was talking about. Being the Chief Operator of a sewage treatment plant may not seam like a glorious job but it is a very important one in my opinion. 

All Photos are from "The Winnipesaukee Rive Basin Program" pamphlet. 

Food Inc.

Watching the film Food Inc has made me think a lot about the industrial food process. Their are so many thing wrong with the way that our food is produced. From GM crops to the continual turning down of Kevin's Law we have a lot to improve on. My favorite part of the movie was getting to see the visuals of Pollyface Farm witch I really enjoyed reading about in The Omnivores Dilemma. 


Kevin's Law
The storie of Kevin's Law is a sad one but it is something that must be told. In 2001 two year old Kevin Kowalcyk was killed by E. coli O157:H7 that he got from eating an infected hamburger. Kevin's parents talks about how they lost her baby boy: "On Tuesday, July 31, 2001, our two-and-a-half year old son, Kevin awoke with diarrhea and a mild fever. By Thursday morning, he was much sicker and was hospitalized for dehydration and bloody stools. Later that afternoon, we were given the diagnosis: E. coli O157:H7. The following day Kevin’s kidneys started failing. He had developed the dreaded Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS). We spent the next 8 days living in the hospital watching our beautiful son slip away from us. By Tuesday, Kevin was on a ventilator and continuous dialysis. By the end of the week, he was receiving numerous medications to stabilize his blood pressure and heart rate. On August 11th at 8:20 P.M., after being resuscitated twice, our beloved Kevin died. We did not know the risks we were taking by feeding our child a hamburger." No parent should have to go through this so after Kevin's death his mother went on a mission to make sure it never happened again. If made a bill Kevin's Law would give the FDA the power to shut down plants that produced contaminated meat. The Law has been seen by congress multiple times but has yet to be put in place. I think that it is ridicules that the FDA dose not have the power to shut down plants. This law could possibly save lives but because of money the big companies wont let it pass witch is to bad. 


Genetically Modified Crops

According to The Center for Food Safety it is estimated:"that upwards of 60 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves--from soda to soup, crackers to condiments--contain genetically engineered ingredients." One of the bigest manufactures of prosed soy is Monsanto a huge company with lots of controle. Monsanto has a patent on there seeds and any one who is found growing the seeds illegally is vulnerable to copyright infringement. This is even true for farmers who get the GM seeds blown into their crops. While GM crops have a higher yield and come round up ready they are not as ethically sound and most of the money that comes from growing the produce goes strait to the seed companies.  


Polyface Farm 
My favorite part of the movie Food Inc. was getting to see footage of Polyface farm witch is owned and operated  by the Salatin family in Virginia. The produce beyond organic meat and produce witch is then sold locally. While the way that they farm is much hard to do and takes a lot more work the end product is much healthier and more rewarding








Food Inc. was a hard movie to watch but it is an important one. The cruelty that the animals receive is no fun to see but since watching the movie I feel much more informed. I had no idea how much of our food is modified or exactly how terrible animals in feed lots are treated. We have talked about these things in class and most of the big idea are brought up in The Omnivores Dillema but seeing the visuals made it seam so much more real. One sean that was particularly terrible to watch was when the farmer was walking through her chicken houses picking up all the dead chicken.  By far the worst part to watch was when a cow who was to weak to carry his own body weight was being pushed around by a fork life. These images will stay with me and have made me much more informed about what I am eating.