Geneva wastewater plant wins top honor

You flush the toilet. Stuff goes away. End of story.

Except it isn't.

For its work making sure that Genevans don't pollute the Fox River, the Geneva wastewater treatment plant recently received the 2007 Plant of the Year trophy from the Fox Valley Operators Association.

The group has 600 members from 30 plants, from Fox Lake on the north to Yorkville on the south and a few from DuPage County. The award is based on a plant's maintenance and upkeep, the correct operation of treatment equipment, and the quality of the educational presentations it makes when the association gathers for monthly meetings.

"That's what makes it special," said Ed Parker, a plant worker. "It's from your peers."

The five guys on Geneva's team -- Parker, Dan Dobnick, Dave Norris, Dan Chandler and plant manager Jeff Price -- are all licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency, or, as Parker put it, "There's no jamoke coming off a snowplow to run the plant."

Their trained eyes, noses and ears can spot something amiss, by color and smell of what's passing through or the noise of the equipment.

"People get the wrong idea about the plant," said Dobnick, a laboratory services coordinator. It's all about getting the solids -- especially stuff that is a food source for harmful bacteria, like cake mix washed off machinery at a local food packaging company -- out of the water. After all, downstream Aurora draws its drinking water from the Fox.

"Giving it a second chance," referring to sewage, is their motto.

Trash such as lumber, latex gloves and cigarette butts is caught by a screen as sewage comes into the plant. Body waste is pretty much mashed up as it travels there, Dobnick said.

The plant compresses, in space and time, what nature does to filter water.

Dobnick credits the plant's heavy lifters: microorganisms. Keeping them happy is key, he said. That's done with a computerized system that judges how much oxygen should be injected into the pools, based on what's in the sewage and how much of it there is.

Wastewater goes through clarifiers where microorganisms eat any remaining solids. The fat and happy microorganisms then settle to the bottom of big tanks, to be returned to the clarifiers to start eating again.

In the summer, wastewater is passed by ultraviolet lights for disinfection, where the DNA of any remaining bacteria is mutated so they can't reproduce. It's then sent to the river. (In winter, cold weather kills the bacteria.)

They try not to use chlorine, because it is dangerous for workers and because you have to remove it from the water before it can go into the river. It's only used if flow is so heavy that the main plant can't handle it all; then diversion tanks are opened up.

Meanwhile, biosolids go to two anaerobic digesters for further reduction; the methane gas given off is used to power equipment. That material then is spun in a centrifuge, and the dry "cake" -- "It's a happy word for 'sludge,' " Dobnick said -- is stored in a warehouse until a local farmer takes it to spread on his fields for fertilizer.

"Wastewater is always changing. There's something different every day," said Dobnick, who tests samples of the sewage at all the different points in the plant for stuff like ammonia nitrogen, suspended solids and fecal coliform.

The Geneva plant aims to operate at a level greater than the standards set by the EPA. For instance, it has an overkill rate of 60 percent on the ultraviolet treatments. There are backups for everything.

"That's one of the proud pieces," Dobnick said.

They're even proud of how the plant, which is right by the Fox River Trail, looks, with a decorative iron fence around it, plans for a park where the old sludge lagoon used to sit, and a small garden outside the lab house.

"We're a part of the community," Dobnick said.