Last month on August 15th, a team of CSWR engineers hosted an educational field trip to their Confluence Rivers facilities for non-engineering staff to learn about the technology behind water and wastewater treatment. A group of employees ranging from accounts payable and regulatory case specialists to finance managers and human resource director made a day trip to Terre du Lac and Lake Virginia to better appreciate the work that goes into improving a distressed and underperforming system.

These systems, often in violation of compliance standards, involve work that touches every aspect of the company from assets acquired on paper to equipment that needs repairing and replacing. It’s a process that doesn’t happen overnight – and the group was able to benefit from a hands-on lesson in the lifecycle of a treatment plant and its many components, including remote monitoring, well houses, booster pumps, road access and gate systems, single cell and triple cell lagoons and their aeration technology, microorganism process, and final discharge of treated wastewater back into the nearby water bodies.

“We’re committed to educating all our employees about how water and wastewater treatment facilities work. It’s a great opportunity for office personnel that typically don’t go into the field, to come face to face with the kinds of assets they are tasked with supporting throughout a facility acquisition life cycle and beyond. It underscores how important it is that everyone understands how their job contributes to our mission of bringing safe, reliable and environmentally responsible water to the communities we serve,” noted Josiah Cox, president and CEO of Central States Water Resources.