Quality onsite installers are constantly learning, whether by attending local training programs, reading industry magazines, networking with peers, or visiting national trade shows and conferences.
Often, installers’ education focuses on what’s directly in front of them: technologies and methods that apply directly to the counties where they work. That makes perfect sense — and yet there’s a bigger picture some professionals often miss.
One good place to see that bigger picture is at the annual National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association conference. It’s here that industry practitioners can learn about the latest in approaches to decentralized treatment and about new research, regulations and policies that may someday affect them locally.
The NOWRA 19th Annual Conference will be held at the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis Oct. 25-27, with the theme, “Surface Discharge: Challenges and Solutions.” This year there will be a technical conference only — the usual trade show with technology exhibits is taking a one-year break. However, there will be a tabletop trade show for industry suppliers to connect with attendees.
Meanwhile, the organization and its members can gear up for a 2011 Super Conference involving NOWRA, the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) and the State Onsite Regulators Alliance (SORA).
Why surface discharge?
The local host for the 2010 conference will be the Missouri Small-flows Organization. It just so happens, in that region of the country, many onsite systems use surface discharge, according to Tom Groves, NOWRA president. These aren’t the kind of surface discharges in which raw waste is piped directly into a ditch or creek. Usually the effluent is secondary treated with an ATU.
Still, soil treatment would be preferable. “We’re trying to encourage these owners and show them that technology works and that we should be putting that effluent into the ground,” he says. “It’s too easy to still have new construction that uses surface discharge. The EPA does not like it at all, because technically that would require an NPDES permit under the Clean Water Act. But the state agencies and the counties are not really doing anything to discourage it.
“In an ideal world if the ATU is running perfectly and the ATU had a maintenance contract, and the chlorinator was working, there may not be a problem. But when you have soil, why not take advantage of the soil?”
While surface discharge issues will have top billing, the conference technical program will cover the full range of onsite treatment topics. There will be presentations on regulation, policy and management, case studies of successful technology installations and management approaches, panel discussions, and half-day to full-day seminars.
Programs will cover areas such as nitrogen removal, cluster system design and application, water reuse, system performance evaluation, soil and site evaluation, performance standards, training and certification and integrated water management.
In addition, a one-day learning track is planned specifically for designers, installers and O&M providers to help them understand advances in pretreatment and subsoil dispersal and the business opportunities those technologies represent.
The State of Illinois has committed to CEU credits for installers attending, and at press time other states were reviewing the material for possible approval. The NOWRA Web site has information showing the list of states that have approved CEU units.
Combining forces
The 2011 conference with NEHA and SORA is exciting to contemplate. It makes a person ask: Why wasn’t this done before? NEHA (www.neha.org) is the purveyor of the Certified Installer of Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems national credential, which is gaining momentum around the country.
SORA (www.nesc.wvu.edu/sora /regulators.cfm) is a national organization that represents onsite wastewater regulators from all 50 states, plus the United States Territories, tribes and Canadian provinces.
The concept of the joint conference developed under the Memorandum of Understanding with the EPA that NOWRA and many other groups are part of, says Groves. At the last renewal, of the MOU, SORA became an official signatory.
“At one of the annual meetings of the MOU partnership, we discussed ways to work together on our conferences. We’re still working out some of the logistics of the Super Conference. We’d like to do the joint conference maybe every three years or so. The advantage to NOWRA is that NEHA and SORA are county and state regulators, and that’s an audience that doesn’t usually attend the NOWRA program in big numbers.
“We’re also working jointly on a number of initiatives and it’s good for us to get together every few years.”
It’s hard to imagine anything more appropriate than getting members of all three organizations together in the same hotel for three days. It’s easy to imagine some great ideas and helpful connections coming out of this conference.
