on nutrients and metals in the efflu-ent will go down, and a new plant isthe only way we'll be able to meetthose limits. Copper, in particular is abaffling problem; it reads above theallowable limits right now. "We don'tknow why or where it comes from,"says Hendrix.

Michelle Steinberger rifflesthrough the plans and explains thatthe Virginia Water QualityImprovement Fund will pay 90 per-cent of the cost of anything that dealswith biological nutrientremoval…about $7 million. That'sthe main thrust behind theChesapeake Bay Act, to rid ourstreams and rivers of nutrients. Nevermind that most of these nutrientscome from farms and suburbanlawns; it just easier to come downhard on a town with a pipe that belch-es 700,000 gallons of effluent perday into a scenic river. That's what'scalled, in the water quality industry, a"point source."

Back to our story. The state willloan up to $11 million more interest-free to build a plant that can treat twomillion gallons a day. The problem is,because of inflow and infiltration(remember that?), the existing plantis already treating two million gallonson rainy days, sometimes more. For$4 million more at 4 percent, we canhave a plant with a three-million gal-lon capacity. With the pressures ofresidential development still evident,despite the housing slump, one canonly wonder how long that will last.

Michelle Steinberger is committedto her job. In the war on pollution,she's the one down in the trenchesleading the troops. "A lot of peoplehave misconceived ideas about thepeople who run wastewater plants,"she says. "Actually, if you truly careabout the environment and you wantto make a change in the environ-ment, this is the place to be. If youwant to improve things and makethings better for future generations,it's where the action is." Amen to that.

Now, who wants to go out andempty that trash can?

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IIt's lunchtime and you're devouring a burg-er, fries and a soft drink at one of Orange'sseveral fast food restaurants.

You rise from the table and scrape thepaper place mat, two paper napkins, the drinkcup with straw, the cardboard french fries con-tainer and a couple of squeezed flat catsuppockets into the trash. Outta sight, outta mind.

You go to the restroom and do what wenormally do in restrooms. You flush the toiletand wash your hands at the lavatory. Severalgallons of water sluice your personal detritusdown the drain. You dry your hands on apaper towel and toss it in the bin. All of it outtasight, outta mind.

But not quite, because, like it or not, you'restill ultimately responsible for what you throwaway.

It's just that the starting point of this whole

exercise, when you unwrapped that juicyburger and started to eat was oh so muchmore attractive than the ending point, whenyou jettisoned it.

We ooh and ahh about the water supplyand spend millions on emergency impound-ments and, during drought years, hold TVinterviews with the Rapidan spillway as abackdrop. But no one cares about the wasteend–the metal pipe, barely 100 yards belowthat same spillway that is returning this rentedwater back to the river.

So, let's follow this stuff from the receivingend to its final resting place, because as men-tioned before, we, the citizens of the mostwasteful nation on the planet, are still ulti-mately responsible for not just what we con-sume but what we throw away. In this two partseries on waste, we'll start with the water.

Never mind that most of these nutrients come from farms and

suburban lawns; it just easier tocome down hard on a town with a

pipe that belches 700,000 gallons ofeffluent per day into a scenic river.

"If you truly care about the and you want to make a change in

the environment, this is the place to be."

Outta sight, outta mind

The story of waste, part I "We've had huge toads, snakes,crayfish… live ones six inches long."

It is interesting to note that thedigester at the treatment plant is most

effective when heated to 98 degrees.Funny… our own personal internal

digesters operate at the same temper-ature, and our kidneys are a kind of

trickling filter in reverse.

The OrangeWastewater

Treatmentfacility offof Spicer'sMill Road.

In the foreground

is one oftwo trickling

filters,sprayingeffluent

over a honeycomb

populatedby aerobic

micro-organisms.

The brickstructure to

the rear isthe digester.

Photo by Phil Audibert

After being treated in the digester for 20 to 30 days, solids are now called sludge and spread out in dryingbeds under roof before being trucked to the landfill.

Photo by Susie Audibert

At a rate of about 700,000 gallons per day, treated effluent returns to the river from which it came. Notethe spillway in the background where the intake for the town's water supply is located upstream.

Photo by Phil Audibert

We ooh and ahh about the water supply and spend millions on emergencyimpoundments and, during drought years, hold TV interviews with the Rapidan

spillway as a backdrop. But no one cares about the waste end–the metal pipe, bare-ly 100 yards below that same spillway that is returning this rented water back to

the river.

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Down the drain to the river

"They always care about thewater, the river and what's going totown, but they never consider whathappens when they flush."Orange Wastewater TreatmentPlant Operator MichelleSteinberger sums it up in just a fewwords.

It's true…once you depress thatlever on the toilet, or run a load oflaundry or take a shower, or startthe dishwasher, all that used waterjust magically disappears. Outtasight, outta mind.

Well not quite.It actually goes on a complex journey involving micro-

organisms both aerobic and anaerobic to a treatment plant,either the one in your back yard (if you have a septic sys-tem) or the one on Spicer's Mill Road (if you live in the Townof Orange) or the Rapidan Service Authority facilities (if youlive in Gordonsville or Lake of the Woods). Let's follow theTown of Orange's system.

The first problem is it leaks, whereas your backyard sys-tem probably does not. As much as 17 miles of sewerpipes run under the streets of Orange. Some of thesepipes are old…half a century or more. The oldest ones aremade of clay and have loose joints or are just plain broken.Tree roots have wormed their way into the system.

Water takes the path of least resistance. So after a goodrain, it will flow into these pipes not out. This problem iscalled inflow and infiltration, “I and I” for short, and little canbe done about it, short of ripping up all the streets inOrange and replacing the sewer lines.

Eventually this waste water arrives via an interceptorpipe to the Orange Wastewater Treatment plant where,through a sluice gate, it is measured for volume…usuallyabout 700,000 gallons a day, but after a good rain, as muchas 2 million or more.

At this point in the system the water is foul, dank anddark. It passes through an ingenious revolving screen sys-tem that picks out solid things and dumps them into a largetrash barrel. Michelle Steinberger ticks off a list. "We've hadhuge toads, snakes, crayfish… live ones six inches long."What this tells them is that there is an opening in a sewerline near a stream that is letting these live critters in, but just

where, nobody knows.When the trash barrel fills as it does several times a day,

a treatment plant worker must wheel this heavy wet stink-ing load up a ramp by hand and empty it into a dumpster.On occasion, they have found money, as much as $20, inthis fetid bin. Donninglatex gloves they gin-gerly extract the bills,wash them, sanitizethem, dry them out,and spend them onsomething nice.Finders keepers.

Next in line thewaste water is aeratedto re-oxygenate it andto separate out gritwhich plays havoc withthe pumps. The wastewater then spends twoto three hours in a 12-14 foot deep tank.T r a c k - d r i v e nsqueegees slowly rakesolids that have pre-cipitated out to a hop-per. From there thesolids are pumped tothe digester. More onthat later.

At this point the waste water has significantly improvedin both color and odor. It is now gray water and is pumpedto the top of two squat silos called trickling filters. Here thewater is sprayed over a honeycomb mesh that runs thedepth of each tower. On this honeycomb grow microbesthat feed on nutrients in the waste water. Thanks to theselittle beasties, what precipitates out the bottom of the filteris considerably cleaner.

But like all living things, these critters grow, reproduceand die, and the dead ones slough off to cause whatMichelle Steinberger calls "a whole other sedimentationproblem." That too is sent to the digester. The resulting,almost clear, effluent is treated with chlorine to killpathogens, then sulphur dioxide to rid it of chlorine and ispiped to the river about a quarter-mile away.

At this point the wastewater is almost clear, but I would-n't drink it if I were you. According to Orange TownManager Cole Hendrix it is scientifically possible to cleaneffluent to the point that you could drink it, but it is prohibi-tively expensive.

The effluent joins the Rapidan River about 100 yardsdownstream of the water treatment plant intake. It is thesame color as the river itself, clear and green-tinted, withan occasional scum bubble floating by. On this particularday, during a dry spell in August, it is coming out at a rateof 759 gallons per minute. If you compare that flow to theriver as a whole during a two week period in August, we'retalking between one and three percent of the total volumeof the river, which is more than the proverbial drop in the

bucket.The next group of human

beings downstream who relyon the Rapidan for theirdrinking water are the folksat Lake of the Woods, wherethe Rapidan ServiceAuthority operates bothwater and waste treatmentplants. Next in line is the Cityof Fredericksburg.

Back to the digester.These are the, uh, solids.They spend between 20 and30 days in a huge sealedand heated vat as anaerobicorganisms convert them intosludge, giving off methanegas in the process. The gasis burned off, polymers areadded to wring out excessmoisture and the sludge ispumped to drying beds. Theremaining liquids seepthrough a sand filter andrejoin the water treatment

process.Once the sludge develops cracks like a desert floor it is

dry enough to collect. It is forked, by hand, to the middle ofthe bed,scooped up witha front-endloader, emptiedinto a towndump truck andsent to the land-fill for disposal."When it dries, itsmells like dirt,"says Michelle,adding that evenmarijuana plantsand cherrytomatoes havev o l u n t a r i l ysprouted fromthis rich blacksoil.

It is also inter-esting to notethat the sameprocess hap-pens in our ruralseptic systems;

it's just that it takes three to five years instead of 20 to 30days. Our septic tanks are our digesters and our drainfields are our trickling filters. By the time our effluent reach-es ground water, it is theoretically safe to drink. It better be,because our neighbor's well, or even our own well, is goingto bring it back up into the house to start the whole cycle allover again.

It is interesting to note that the digester at the treatmentplant is most effective when heated to 98 degrees.Funny… our own personal internal digesters operate at thesame temperature, and our kidneys are a kind of tricklingfilter in reverse.

Michelle Steinberger, who has a degree in biology, walksinto the lab and spouts off a bewildering run of acronyms."There's a host of tests," she summarizes; tests that mustbe conducted daily. The wastewater treatment plant oper-ates 24-7, unlike the more glamorous water treatment plantwhich can be shut down at night.

Michelle and seven employees keep it running on abudget of $700,000 a year. She points to deficiencies in thesystem, saying it is held together with "chewing gum andduct tape because we don't want to spend a lot of moneyon fixing a plant that we'll hopefully replace some day." Theexisting plant was built in 1990. The day it opened it wasalready obsolete.

She hauls out plans for a new treatment plant that willoperate on a different system called "activated sludge."Gone are the trickling filters replaced by a four-stage sys-tem with disk filters and ultra violet light instead of chlorine.This is going to be a hard sell, but the town is between a

rock and a hardplace, the rockbeing what thenew Chesa-peake Bay Actmandates andthe hard placebeing what thetaxpayers ofOrange will tol-erate.

T o w nManager ColeHendrix saysthe town willentertain bidson this $22 mil-lion project inJanuary. "Wedon't have anychoice," heshrugs. Inthree or fouryears, theallowable limits

Wastewater flows from the tanks (left) where primary sludge is collected to the trick-ling filters (right) before eventually being piped to the river.

Photo by Phil Audibert

An ingeniousrevolvingescalatorpicks out

objects fromthe raw

sewage anddumps it

into a waiting

trash can.Wastewater

treatmentplant

employeeshave foundeverything

from liveaquatic

animals tomoney in

this screen.

Photo bySusie

Audibert

It all startshere as raw

sewagefrom thetown ofOrange

arrives andis measured

as it goesthrough

this sluicegate at the

wastewatertreatment

plant.

Photo bySusie

Audibert After further purification by trickling filters, effluent meanders through the tanks in the fore-ground, before being aerated again. In the final tank it is dosed with chlorine and then sulphurdioxide (to remove the chlorine) before heading to the river beyond the small brick building inthe background.

Photo by Susie Audibert