Universities serve as headquarters for statewide training.
By Peter Hildebrandt
A number of instructive state and regional onsite water treatment training programs have been shut down within the past few years, but there are still a number of programs and centers scattered around the country that continue to meet this critical need. The hope is that the important work they’re doing can continue, because whether training comes from innovative programs or through top-notch training and research centers, educating onsite water treatment professionals is vital to our environment and public health.
University Training Site
The program at Utah State University (USU) in Logan, aptly fulfills the need for onsite water treatment training on a statewide level. To initiate the program, the university partnered with 12 Utah local health departments, the Utah Division of Water Quality, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. In 2000, inspired by various demonstration sites in states around the country, construction started on the Huntsman On-Site Wastewater Treatment and Demonstration Site on USU’s campus.
The 2-acre field site features a cutaway septic tank, various types of gravity-flow distribution and absorption systems, and Utah-approved alternative systems. Users of what one professor calls the “septic tank garden” include certification workshop attendees, local board of health officials, county commissioners, elected officials, members of the UT Water Quality Board, students from local universities, and participants of Utah On-Site Wastewater Association meetings. The Huntsman Center hopes that eventually Idaho public health departments and Wyoming natural resource districts will participate in programs at the Huntsman facility.
“Training is the main component of the certification program that was developed through a law passed by our state legislature. The authorization for this training program came from our legislature,” says Judy Sims, the center’s program director. “We only demonstrate systems at our site that are approved for use in Utah. The alternative systems that we show require management. Because of state rule, the alternative systems need to be inspected every six months and certain systems need to have their effluent tested for quality every six months; therefore, we teach how to test and inspect those systems.
“There is a $25 fee associated with every septic system permitted in the state of Utah by the various local health departments. The fees are placed in a restricted account that the center uses to fund training classes; this fee is supplemented with a participant fee of $50 per day, and classes run from one to three days.”
Those involved in management of the site had to be creative in finding monetary backing for the actual facilities; including the receipt of funding from the state’s 319 nonpoint source pollution programs through several projects, funds from the Huntsman Environmental Research Center at Utah State University, and additional support resulting from the mitigation fee ($75,000) imposed on a local industry due to an infraction on an environmental rule. As with other demo sites, the Huntsman project received generous donations from various manufacturers, and many members of the local Utah On-Site Wastewater Associations donated labor.
The USU program is designed to assist participants achieve success in their chosen field. Each workshop’s examination is “open book,” with 80% designated as a “passing” grade.
“For those who have failed, we’ve provided private ‘tutoring sessions’ and retesting, or we’ve required them to take the class and/or exam over again,” says Sims. “Though we get requests to ‘test out’ of the program workshops, we feel that our participants gain much more knowledge from physical training than what can be covered in an exam. There is no underestimating the impact of hands-on training which is still invaluable.”
In addition to extensive coverage of soils and their adequacy as sites for onsite water treatment and other points, the program also covers system installation with an emphasis on design for real-world lots, often with challenging site and soil conditions.
“We gain much from participant feedback,” adds Sims. “It’s invaluable to have everyone’s points of view represented in class discussions. This setting also brings with it a great opportunity for networking among the participants. Overall, I would say our certification program improves professionalism and knowledge in those who work with, and regulate OWT systems. It’s my hope as well that those taking part and getting certified recognize they are protectors and defenders of both public health and the environment.”
Serving Needs in the Midwest
The Kansas Small Flows Association (KSFA) has about a half dozen classes, and they try to add classes each year, according to Morgan Powell, education committee member. These classes are for wastewater treatment only for individual homes, businesses, churches, and other small-flow systems. Classes are held at different locations around Kansas in an effort to respond to the needs of regulators and installers.
Classes include a soils profile evaluation class, basics of onsite wastewater treatment (two levels), inspection and troubleshooting, drip irrigation, and maintenance of onsite systems. Powell has worked in this area of study for 20 years, and has covered many different topics in this field. He is an extension engineer in water quality and a professor in Biological and Agricultural Engineering. In May 2007, Deanne Presley, a new Ph.D. in Agronomy, was added to the faculty as an extension specialist working with environmental soils.
“Onsite systems serve some 200,000 households in Kansas,” says Powell. “That’s not a huge number, but the state doesn’t have that many people. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has about two full-time position equivalents spread among four people working with oversight of onsite, but none of them are engineers. It’s just a portion of what I do, and I’m the only engineer involved with onsite education. Justifying more people than this working with onsite education and training would be difficult. In addition to the KSFA sponsored trainings, as an Extension educator, I also do trainings for counties and districts when they are requested.”
Because it is more than 400 miles from one side of the state to the other, KSFA has opted to take its program to different areas of the state under the belief it can reach more people that way. “We have training sessions in all parts of the state, but more training is scheduled in the higher population centers (Kansas City and the Kansas River Valley, Wichita area, and the eastern third of the state). There is little extra funding for the onsite training other than the registration fees that participants pay,” says Powell.
Multifaceted Program
The onsite water treatment training program at the University of Missouri–Columbia (UMO) is really a coalition of groups and objectives. Through the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, two major courses are taught: the basic installer certification and the advanced installer certification. The onsite water treatment training center at UMO is used for many of the training sessions. Randy Miles, associate professor of soil science and director of the Onsite Wastewater Training Center at UMO, handles the soils part of the program. Dennis Seavers, retired from the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department, was called back from retirement to teach part of the advanced treatment course at the center.
UMO’s program goes beyond the basics. For example, the more advanced treatment systems—such as drip irrigation or media filters—require students to attend advanced courses. The center also provides third-party training for the state, featuring a course for inspection of onsite systems for loan transactions. “In other words, if I sell my house to you and it has an onsite system, in most cases either the buyer or the lending institution wants to have it inspected,” says Miles. “I organize and coordinate the training for that. This is a third-party certification through the Department of Health and Senior Services, but I or my colleagues or others from other agency brought in to work on that, so we have a good coalition of resource people to do the training on that.”
A prerequisite for the third-party training course is completion of UMO’s basic installer’s course. “We have a lot of different professionals who do inspections, including installers, operations maintenance, and service providers or even home inspectors who have never actually put in a system themselves,” explains Miles, “but we require them to take and complete successfully the state’s basic installer’s course, which takes two days. From there, they can then take a course in onsite inspections at time of sale.”
Not only is Miles involved with many of the programs and courses, he is also responsible for garnering the participation of members of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), which has helped broaden the scope of the program. For example, one MDNR member can focus on the inspection of private water wells, while another can lead training seminars on the use of tracer dyes if such substances need to be placed into the system for studies and evaluations. As a result, when a student successfully completes the two-day inspection-at-time-of-sale-course, they simultaneously earn a registered-dye-tracer certification with the MDNR.
“Our program is multifaceted between various agencies and institutions of higher learning, as well as just the normal regulatory agencies,” says Miles. “I teach the introductory soils course at U of MO, but I also use the demonstration center in one lab toward the end of the semester to show students the use of soils and what many agriculture students would consider to be a nontraditional area. I use it to teach science.
“We have a cutaway of a sand filter at the site, and I can take that and say we can use it in an intermittent or single-pass mode, or I can show with the septic tank how we recirculate and do denitrification and the loss of nitrogen. Hopefully, my students will get the connection that this is what happens out in the field when you apply nitrogen fertilizer when it’s wet. It gives a real, live, hands-on, visual application, as well as a reinforcement of the scientific principle.
“Also, I tell my students: Well, engineers design these systems; sometimes they don’t get a lot of microbiology or soils in their training. But you do not need to take a back seat to an engineer because you know biologically what happens when they design these boxes and devices. Therefore, look at this. If you know something about the application when it comes to an agronomic aspect and understand the science, you can understand what the engineers are doing with treatment in a wastewater system.”
In addition to all this, Miles does some training with and for the Missouri Small-Flows Organization (MSO). Most of the courses the MSO are designed for are people around the state interested in continuing education units (CEUs). Soil scientists, installers, and inspectors at time of sale are required to have 20 hours of CEUs every three years. In most cases, one hour of classroom time is considered one hour of CEU. An added convenience: courses are offered in a centrally located cities, such as St. Joseph, Kansas City, St. Louis, or Springfield.
The high demand for CEUs means that no one person or organization can completely handle all facets of the program’s administration. “I view it as a nice professional, collegial gathering from a broad cross-section of those involved with onsite water treatment,” adds Miles. “No one person has a corner on the market or the information, and we try to come to an agreement on what should be taught and those sorts of issues.
“It’s been a long time coming, but I think it’s pretty comprehensive. We’ve been doing the training in onsite water treatment at the U of MO since 1996. Other programs have been phased-in later in the 1990s. The CEU program has come about within the past four years. Clearly, all of this didn’t come at once, but through a slow progression over the years. I like to call it evolutionary instead of revolutionary.”
The center has started charging for the use of its training center to help with upkeep, and the MSO has been charging money for programs, as well. In fact, the lion’s share of the revenue source comes from fees for courses taken. In addition, some items are donated out at their agronomy farm, where their training center is located. Through a mini-grant, additional materials and items have also been donated or added for demonstration purposes.
“We have really trained a lot of people over the years,” says Miles. “And we’re trying hard to keep this program viable. The conventional wisdom, too, is that I’m just a fountain of knowledge and should know it all. But the fact is, I am regularly attending conferences and courses myself to keep up with all the new technology and findings coming out regularly.
“I recently attended and participated in the American Society Agricultural and Biological Engineers’ (ASABE) 11th National Symposium on Individual and Small Community Sewage Systems at Warwick, RI, held every three years. It’s always nice and refreshing to go elsewhere and get a prospective on things. I find that the more I get into this work, the more there is to learn.”
Serving a Region
The New England Onsite Wastewater Training Program, located at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, has a mission to educate both wastewater practitioners and the general public on onsite water treatment system issues. Included in that objective is to advance the use of alternative and innovative technologies to both protect and improve public health in the New England Region and also support sustainable development.
These issues are felt especially keenly in Rhode Island, a state with limited land area, a high volume of land-water interface that further complicates wastewater drainage, and environmental protection concerns. These issues echo throughout New England.
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Photo: Virginia Office of Environmental Health Services |
| Onsite water treatment, at the Virginia Center for Onsite Wastewater Training, consists of two-day courses offered at SVCC. |
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Photo: Virginia Office of Environmental Health Services |
| Training is done to analyze the soil, evaluating it for the issue of permits. |
The center opened in 1993, and receives a majority of funding from a combination of private industry donations, the University of Rhode Island, the Department of Environmental Management, and the EPA. The onsite water treatment program offers classroom and field training experience for wastewater professionals, regulators, municipal and state officials, watershed groups, as well as homeowners. The onsite water treatment is operated in partnership with over 40 private sector partners, the RI Department of Environmental Management, the EPA, and others.
The centerpiece of the thorough program is the Onsite Wastewater Training Center (onsite water treatment) situated at the University’s Peckham Research Farm, a 2-acre demonstration and field training facility designed for both conventional and innovative and alternative septic system technologies. Regionally, Rhode Island’s program trains 600–800 people per year.
This training center also has 22 full-scale systems constructed aboveground for hands-on learning. The systems featured include the conventional setup, the single-pass sand filter, the recirculating sand filter, the peat filter, the textile filter, aerobic treatment units, fixed activated sludge system, the trickling filter, composting toilets, bottomless sand filters, and pressure drainfields. Additionally, there are over 55 demonstration and research systems installed in seven Rhode Island communities.
A Coming Together of Agencies
The Virginia Center for Onsite Wastewater Training (onsite water treatment) was established in 2005 as collaboration between the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and Southside Virginia Community College (SVCC). The two principals at onsite water treatment are Don Alexander, director of the VDH Division of Onsite Sewage and Water Services, and Tom Reynolds, dean of continuing education and workforce development at SVCC.
The format at onsite water treatment consists of two-day courses offered through the environmental program at SVCC. Students earn one college credit and 1.5 CEUs per each two-day course; courses are offered year round. Six of the eight courses that the onsite water treatment currently offers are taught two times per year. Several additional courses are under development.
Currently, onsite water treatment serves the entire state from an SVCC training facility located in Pickett Park, a business development area about 40 miles southwest of Richmond on the grounds of Ft. Pickett. “SVCC allows onsite water treatment to use its Occupational/Technical Center at Fort Pickett in addition to giving us access to an adjoining 10 acres that we are trying to develop as a demonstration area for onsite equipment,” says Tom Joy, a VDH technical services engineer, who chairs the onsite water treatment Steering Committee.
“SVCC’s academic rating benefits from every college credit they give out for onsite water treatment courses. They see this as a program of huge onsite water treatment potential, and down the road, they feel onsite water treatment will be a major asset to a new campus they want to establish at Fort Pickett.
“The onsite water treatment Steering Committee recently visited the top-notch NC State Onsite Wastewater Training facility, and its director, Mike Hoover, spoke to us,” adds Joy. “One of the things I learned from him that I consider very important is that you cannot develop a facility like onsite water treatment all at once. It has to be done in baby steps. We want to follow his advice, and ideally, we will be able to involve the onsite treatment community every step of the way. That’s how we want to operate.”
Joy describes their program as a young, expanding program. “We are also looking for enthusiastic volunteers with the background and desire to develop a course in their area of expertise that would fit into the onsite water treatment curriculum. They can contact me if they have questions or would like more information.”
Danna Revis is the training coordinator for the Virginia Office of Environmental Health Services. She focuses primarily on basic training for the new environmental health specialists hired in the public sector.
With the advent of the AOSE program, onsite water treatment started offering training to AOSE candidates that fulfill certification requirements. Some field weeks take place in different parts of the state, especially in the soil-training component of the training, and for their design classes, they will move around the state of Virginia to some degree. This is due largely to the practical components, like needing to evaluate soil from different regions of the state.
“We set up a ‘fake’ subdivision and then they actually evaluate the soil and issue permits. The core courses that I facilitate have traditionally been the training for the environmental health specialist, EHS, employees. So, customarily, it has been user fees, which have supported our budget. We are connected with the training center and we hope that as it develops, we will be able to work those resources into our basic training modules also. “I think with the lower housing starts lately, this may have put some pressure on our state’s budget; the housing downturn causes a drop in the general fund, not just in the area of environmental health.”
Peter Hildebrandt is a writer specializing in science and engineering topics.
OW - March/April 2008 |
