Milwaukee is a great place in early April, especially since they built Miller Park, with its retractable roof, as the home of the Brewers.
Before then, opening days were often an exercise in masochism. Forty-degree afternoons are common at that time of year, and while that may be great for football at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, it’s wicked for baseball. I know, because I went to a few very chilly openers.
This year there’s another reason to be in Milwaukee in early April, and it’s the NOWRA 18th Annual Technical Education Conference and Expo. It runs Monday through Thursday, April 6-9. If you stay over an extra day, and if you don’t mind buying tickets from a scalper, you can catch the Brewers’ home opener against the Cubs.
The big picture
If you’re an onsite design, installation or service professional, the conference is reason enough to travel to Milwaukee. This year’s theme is “ONSITE: The Sustainable Wastewater Opportunity.”
There are two national NOWRA events each year — the technical conference in spring and the Installer Academy in December. The academy has more hands-on, practical training for installation specialists, but if you’re of that persuasion, you should not assume that the conference is just for the academics and regulators.
For one thing, the conference program includes a considerable number of highly practical sessions, not the least of which is the annual program, “The Basics of Onsite Systems — A to Z.” For another, the conference covers big-picture issues that eventually touch the entire industry and everyone in it.
In important respects, it’s fair to say that if you’ve never been to the NOWRA conference, you don’t have a clear picture of the industry you work in and where it fits in the grand scheme of environmental and wastewater management.
It’s inspiring to see yourself and your business as part of something bigger. And seeing that bigger picture can help you perceive business opportunities you might never know about if you just stick to attending your state meetings and working in your own neighborhood.
On the agenda
NOWRA always has an excellent technical program, and you can find that on the Web site at www.nowra.org. (Look for the conference emblem in the lower right corner of the home page.) It’s also worth looking at the field trips and other special offerings.
If you arrive on Monday, you can join a tour of four onsite treatment sites in the area. They include systems serving a high school with an enrollment of 1,000 students, a major Cabela’s sporting goods store and deli, a 100-home subdivision, and a business center that includes restaurants.
The innovations at these sites demonstrate why NOWRA believes onsite is a green solution to wastewater management. All these developments are the kind typically associated with municipal sewer service — yet onsite systems serve them well and keep the local environment safe.
If you want to see the other side of wastewater treatment, you can visit the Jones Island Water Recla-mation Facility in Milwaukee during a three-hour tour on Tuesday afternoon. Jones Island, at 300 million gallons per day, handles wastewater from 28 communities in the Milwaukee area.
Stick around for Thursday and you can take in an all-day Midwest Regional Code Forum. If you’ve been frustrated by changing state and local regulations, and by rules that differ from county to county for no seemingly logical reason, this would be a good place to spend time.
This roundtable of federal, state and local officials will consider whether regional onsite rules would be feasible. Small-group discussions will explore how to overcome barriers and make regional technical requirements acceptable. The outcome is expected to be a roadmap marking the way to better and more consistent rulemaking.
Browsing the menu
Those aren’t the only programs of interest. A quick look at the overall program and the technical session agenda reveals many topics worth exploring. They include:
• A general session presentation on “The Greening of Wastewater Treatment”
• A program on “Implementing a Performance-Based Code,” led by Bruce Lesikar of Texas A&M University
• A technical session providing an overview of soils and site evaluation
• A technical session on development of certification-specific training for onsite professionals.
And there are many more items, as auctioneers like to say, “too numerous to mention.” So think about heading to Milwaukee for the NOWRA conference. You’ll enjoy a hospitable city in a beautiful Lake Michigan lakefront location, with great restaurants, including some of the best German cuisine you can find.
And a chance to stick around and snag a ticket to the Brewers’ home opener, played in comfort under the retractable roof at Miller Park.
