SOURCE INTERVIEW
JON BRADLEY
Chief Plant Operator
Orange County Sanitation District
Tyson: I don’t agree that it should be a module expanding ex-isting
wastewater or water certifications. A new AWT certifica-tion
should be a separate and standalone certification program
specific to IPR-DPR treatment operators only. A water plant us-ing
UF membranes shouldn’t be required to have an AWT IPR/
DPR certificate to comply with federal or state water quality
regulations. Likewise, I don’t believe a wastewater plant oper-ator
using an advanced technology MBR system should be re-quired
to have an AWT IPR/DPR certificate. However, existing
water and wastewater tests need to be revised and expanded
to include more questions based on the advanced technologies
being used in conventional treatment facilities such as MBR and
UV for wastewater and MF and UF for water.
Remember, the idea of developing a new AWT certification
program was based upon the needs of potable reuse facilities and
their specialized non-conventional operations. That’s where the
focus needs to stay.
SOURCE: In potable reuse two different water treat-ment
trains are involved. How much should wastewater
treatment plant operators know about advanced water
treatment and vice-versa?
Jon: I am a firm believer in being a specialist in your line of
work. In plants the size OCSD and OCWD operate, it would
be extremely difficult to master both wastewater and advance
treatment thoroughly. I don’t expect Tyson to know my pro-cess
in detail and he doesn’t expect me to know his process in
detail. But we both have a general knowledge of each other’s
operations. I would think there is an opportunity to add more
generalized questions about advanced water treatment to the
wastewater certifications testing to aid in increasing awareness
of potable reuse operations. As wastewater operators, it’s im-portant
to be aware of current trends and new technologies and
where things are going on a general level in the wastewater and
water worlds. On the other hand, it makes sense that AWT op-erators
tied to a wastewater plant should have a general overall
awareness of the wastewater plant and its process, although not
to the degree where they’re considered to be expert.
Tyson: I agree. There is an expectation that our operators know
more than a little about how a WWTP works, which is an advan-tage
of their being required to maintain wastewater treatment op-erator
licenses. These general types of knowledge points could be
easily applied on a new AWT IPR/DPR certification exam. These
are very large plants and have very unique operational charac-teristics
and sizable staffs. It’s hard to imagine one utility man-aging
the scope of this joint OCSD/OCWD project, but if I were
managing both a wastewater treatment and AWT IPR/DPR plant
under one utility, I would want to utilize operational staff to its
fullest potential and have operators rotate through WWTP and
AWT operational assignments. In that case it would make sense
for all the operators to have both wastewater and AWT IPR/DPR
certification.
SOURCE: Who should take the lead in developing AWT
certification and training?
Tyson: The current strategy seems to be to turn this over to
AWWA and CWEA (California Water Environment Association)
www.ca-nv-awwa.org 23
ment operator needs to know. What does this say about
existing GWRS operators?
Tyson: There’s a lot of concern. We’ve got one operator who’s
been at OCWD 40 years and has been doing AWT since the 70s.
Is he going to be required to take a whole new test to prove he’s
a proficient AWT operator? If existing operators are going to be
grandfathered in, will an operator carrying a Grade 5 keep his
existing Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator (WWTP) certifica-tion
and be grandfathered at the same level of AWT certification
without having to take an exam? Or if he has to take the exam and
doesn’t pass the first time, will this mean more training? Another
test? And who will pay for it?
The GWRS is classified as a wastewater treatment plant, but
there are few questions on the existing WWTP certification exams
specific to AWT processes. To validate that our operators have the
knowledge and skills specific to our processes and because tradi-tional
wastewater operator exams cover only conventional process-es
generally not found in AWT, we have developed our own inter-nal
testing program for an operator to progress from an Operator I
to Operator II and so on.
SOURCE: What about the idea currently being discussed
of adding an AWT module to existing water and wastewater
certifications?
/www.ca-nv-awwa.org
