Water/wastewater industry experience

Aabeck said:

I work with a technician that decided to move to Seattle and get a job with Boeing, only to discover his years of experience were not even good enough to hire in as an apprentice there.

He got a job at a water bottling plant and called me that night excited (agitated?) asking if I knew what they were putting in their water bottles. I guessed that they opened a garden hose connected to their incoming water system, hopefully filtered it at least, and filled their bottles. Turns out I was right.

And I just checked - both Pepsi Bottling Group and Coca Cola have bottling plants in Flint, Michigan. So guess what they are bottling, and carbonating for all their pop.

Edit: Add American Bottling in Flint for 7-Up products.

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There's a GM plant in Flint that they ended up hooking back up to the Detroit system before this thing blew up because the Flint River water was corroding the engines.

Aabeck said:

I work with a technician that decided to move to Seattle and get a job with Boeing, only to discover his years of experience were not even good enough to hire in as an apprentice there.

He got a job at a water bottling plant and called me that night excited (agitated?) asking if I knew what they were putting in their water bottles. I guessed that they opened a garden hose connected to their incoming water system, hopefully filtered it at least, and filled their bottles. Turns out I was right.

And I just checked - both Pepsi Bottling Group and Coca Cola have bottling plants in Flint, Michigan. So guess what they are bottling, and carbonating for all their pop.

Edit: Add American Bottling in Flint for 7-Up products.

Click to expand...

My research shows that Coke left the Flint area in 2009 and Pepsi is not on the City water supply but the Township. So they are still bottling un-leaded tap water.

This is a great thread. I should've started a similar one before I decided to go from manufacturing to oil&gas.

I spent 11 years in water/wastewater before jumping to manufacturing. I would echo a lot of what's been posted already. My main advice would be to study up on communications, especially radio communications, as you will run into that a LOT in the w/ww field.

There was quite an uptick in business in the era of the government stimulus packages, but that also brought a bunch of folks in from manufacturing looking for a quick buck, and caused many headaches later on.

Definitely make friends with the operators. If they aren't satisfied with the final product, they will generally not hesitate to tell the person who cuts the checks as soon as you're out the door. They have to live with it 24/7/365, so they want it right. Also, all of these folks talk amongst themselves, so if you make an enemy for some reason, you can expect word to spread quickly.

Old thread but has anyone upgraded Trasar systems to say AB PLC? I have a lot of these systems and they look fairly simple.

Learn to recognize it as "the smell of money"...


But never get complacent about the environment. A friend who worked in the industry for 40 years got a small nick on his knee coming up a wet well ladder and waited until he was done with his task to wash and clean it out. Too late; they ended up having to amputate his leg to save his life; career over.

jraef said:

Learn to recognize it as "the smell of money"...


But never get complacent about the environment. A friend who worked in the industry for 40 years got a small nick on his knee coming up a wet well ladder and waited until he was done with his task to wash and clean it out. Too late; they ended up having to amputate his leg to save his life; career over.

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Oh my god. Thats scary.

jraef said:

Learn to recognize it as "the smell of money"...


But never get complacent about the environment. A friend who worked in the industry for 40 years got a small nick on his knee coming up a wet well ladder and waited until he was done with his task to wash and clean it out. Too late; they ended up having to amputate his leg to save his life; career over.

Click to expand...

Sure is. I start a new job with the water/wastewater agency next week.

Hi, I wish you the best. I worked as an industrial electrician and PLC programmer for the Las Vegas Valley Water District for 10 years and change. I took an early out in 2010 and lasted 1-1/2 years without working and went crazy and now I'm a programmer at an assembly plant.

As opposed to an integrator, a not-for-profit utility has its pros and cons:
Pros:
Good benefits and pension. I get a good amount a month for life, not a company funded pension but an annuity.
All the tools, money, time and material to do any job. No questions asked when you drop your fluke 87 IV in a 30' underdrain vault and it shatters into a million pieces. Only question my planner had is do I have the receipt from Grove-Madsen when I stopped to pick up a new one on the company account.
Not too much electrical construction. Lots of PM's which I hated. One winter a little freeze snap caused a lot of exposed little SS lines to PRV's to break, so the director ordered production electrical (us) to install heat trace everywhere. No provision for it, so digging trenches, running circuits, etc. I hated that so much that I almost quit.
As one poster said, the telemetry was interesting. Since this is only potable water, we needed to assist them occasionally. They wouldn't touch anything over 24 VDC. Our equipment was mostly 5 kv motor starters, RVAT starters, Rosemount, E & H, yokogawa instrumentation.

Cons:
No real money to start with. I had come out of the hall in Seattle at $30 an hour and change and moved with my new spouse at the time to Vegas (She didn't like the rain) and went into the public sector at $19 an hour and change. They had just changed the pay increase policy to needing lots of classes, CEU's, touchy-feelie_ classes, on-line training etc for our evals instead of the previous 1- page that gave anyone that could fog a mirror 5 % a year. It took 10 years to get to $40 an hour.
There's a lot of politics at a public entity. Most managers are in name only. I worked for a really good planner; I probably wouldn't have stayed had it been with some of the other Jacka**es there.
State law said that anyone with access to drinking water had to have a Treatment Operator I Certification,full certification and a Distribution Operator III certification, which there were only 4 levels, with the 4th being reserved for management. Lots of classes and math, nice days in the A/C, tests, renewals. I know a lot about water treatment, water math, flow, pressure, level. Big whoop, huh? My OEM doesn't much care about that.

One more Pro: I did learn Rockwell PLC, at their expense PLC 5/40's everywhere, not many HMI's, a lot of program changes, lots of analog BTW, BTR experience, comms experience that has helped me to this day.
I wish you the best and like I say an integrator is different that an actual utility when one is "in-house" so to speak. I love it here in SE Michigan, feels more like home than where I grew up. Palm trees and 75 degrees just doesn't cut it for me at Christmas. I left Vegas in 2010 for Michigan and have only been back once. Good luck!!