The Rich Girl visits the Back River Wasterwater Treatment Plant!
The Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant is a 466 acre water treatment facility located along the Back river on the border of Essex and Dundalk. It is most famously noted for its 2 cold Egg shape domes knows as the "Egg Digesters". This is a technologically advanced water treatment facility covering Baltimore City, Baltimore County and many more around the state.
The Rich Girl: Erin is a part time Promotions Coordinator at WHFS. She comes from rich hills of Hardford County from family that is well off and really doesn't have to work if she didn't want to. She is known around the office for her imaginary problems of not enough bedrooms on the boat, and bad dinner at the country club. She has not done a hard days work in her life.
The Mission: to take Erin out and make her do some hard work and to see what its like to get dirty on the job (where is Mike Row when you need him)
The journey began at the gate of the plant as Erin changed from her baby blue flip flops to her brand new white and pink sneakers. Shoes she clearly bought for the occasion. Because the directors in charge of the facility feared for her well being Phone screener Jeff was forced to go with her and be her protector. (they should have sent Stacey she has 911 on speed dial)
Erin started her tour off with a basic overview of what she is going to see going over basic terminology. She learned things that everything flowing into the facility is 99.9% water. which means that it takes a lot of work to remove .1% everything else from the water.
That brings us to the start of the tour to the start of the tour, special thanks to Rick Perrie who started our tour. (Due to the security and safety some details of the tour will be left out.) This is a picture of a scum pit (scum is the nasty of the nasty in the whole process) and a picture of Erin as she looked in the pit.
This brings us to settlement and skimming this is where Erin learned what a prophylactic was (what a place to learn about condoms)
After showing Erin the worse of the worst right off the bat they decided to show Erin the famous Egg Digesters and the view from the top! (You can see the Bay Bridge from the top of the domes)
There are many process to treating water, but that is the easy part the hard part is what do you do with the Sludge? Sludge is the stuff that is separated from the water it is a mixture of many different things. (its more then poop) Sludge is has its own processes of known as thickening, digesting, and de-watering. This is known as the solids handling. These are the truly messy jobs that Erin got to take part in!
This is the solids or sludge that is separated from water during settlement!
This was one of the more smelly parts of the plant. After seeing and smelling this Erin needed to sit down.
During the Thickening and Digestion processes polymers are added to the sludge. Erin got to play with some lube!
During these dirty processes Erin learned that its not just about getting dirty its more about pushing the right button!
Erin also learned that it there is testing and science to the dirty work. Time to get the samples!
There is one last step to the Solids Handling that is de-watering they send the sludge through a centrifuge and pull the water out. This is where Erin really got to putt some of the sludge between her fingers!
Wow what a tour but what would be a tour with out seeing the final product the clean water? (Go ahead Erin dive in its clean water!)
Special thanks to the wonderful Jack Bradshaw for the tour. With out his wisdom and wonderful stories we wouldn't have made this rich girls life a little bit miserable!
