WWAdcon 2024 Recap

I missed this Friday’s post as I was out of town and attending the WWAdCon here in Michigan. So, since goal was to be consistent with this newsletter, even if I don’t always hit it on Friday, I figured I’d post a recap of my time at the conference. A few days late but here we go! I find a lot of conferences to be nothing more than a sales pitch. Especially some of the conferences I went to in the early part of my career there was some pretty egregious “talks” that were nothing more than just a sales presentation. However, the wastewater administrator’s conference has always been pretty good at providing actual value. If you’re in the industry and reside in Michigan (or I guess if you would like to travel to Michigan), this one is actually good. They usually have a great deal of value adding presentations, a lot of the time from actual operators and engineers working at the plants they are discussing. I intended to do a quick summary/review of each presentation but I’m currently not feeling well (conference cough) and will focus on the ones I enjoyed the most.

A little background for those of you who aren’t aware, WWAdcon is an annual conference held in Frankenmuth, Michigan specifically for wastewater industry administrators. It’s a pretty nice location especially if you have a kids. The whole town’s gimmick is that it is modeled after a Bavarian town. Pretty unique, and since I’m not a native Michigander, the first time I went there I was a little confused but it has grown on me. Oh, and there is good fried chicken. I know, that’s a major selling point.

One of the first presentations that I found to be pretty useful was “Pump Station Upgrade Strategies - Options to Consider in Your Final Solution TJ Bates, Donohue & Associates, Inc”. He went over all the different types of lift stations that are commonly used and exactly what you should consider when choosing a lift station. Even doing this as long as I have, there were quite a few design concepts I wasn’t entirely familiar with and things I’ve never thought of when choosing a lift station. In particular, having some sort of awning over the electrical panels was actually a pretty good idea and something you don’t see nearly enough.

“City of Kalamazoo's Holistic Approach to Selecting New Process Technologies Aaron Davenport, Jones & Henry Engineers, Ltd Ryan Stoughton, City of Kalamazoo”. This approach won’t work for everyone but the presentation was really good on how to actually engage all stakeholders on a major project. I really think the speakers both did a good job of taking a fairly innovative approach of picking a new process at the plant, and going above and beyond on getting the proper equipment for the application. They did this by doing their due diligence with a massive amount of RFIs and creating a conference for all the vendors to get in one room and discuss what will work in their particular application. I also think the way they graded everything and included the operation and maintenance staff was a great idea. All too often you get one person making a unilateral decision and the operators are stuck with suboptimal equipment and processes.

I’m a bit biased on this presentation as I used to work at this plant but I was very interested to see how they solved a problem that I faced when I was there. “Ann Arbor Tackles Stringent Effluent Phosphorus Limits with a Cost-Effective Side-Stream Phosphorus Removal Solution Keith Sanders, Ann Arbor Allen Gelderloos, Jacobs”. While I was working at this plant we always had an issue with the centrate from the centrifuges overloading the BNR process and creating issues with maintaining low enough total phosphorus. The engineer from Jacobs did a good job of explaining all the different options the staff explored, breaking down the pros and cons of each. Ultimately they were able to use lime and some existing processes at the plant to find an economical way to solve the issues they were having.

I enjoyed a lot of the other presentations as well but those were my top three. In addition to great presentations there was a lot of good food and networking. I enjoy catching up with old co-workers, making some new contacts, which is weird because I generally dislike people. Maybe there is hope I can stop being an introvert. Maybe.

A lot of these presentations get posted to the MWEA website, so if you’re interested in checking out the PowerPoints you can find them below:

I don’t think any of the presentations from the 2024 conference are up yet but eventually some of them will be. Enjoy, there is a lot of valuable information there, even if you just check out previous years.

The next few newsletters will be reviews on some equipment that I have been itching to review and get out there. Some good, some bad. Stay tuned and feel free to comment if you have had similar experiences with the brands I’ll be discussing.