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April 16, 2020 58 mins

All that gross stuff we humans put in the water that gets flushed down the sewers has to be taken back out before that water is reintroduced to the environment. That’s the ideal, and it’s essential to staving off the imbalance people bring to the planet.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
and Jerry just ghosted us like a catfish. The bank
is how they put it, and uh, that of course

(00:23):
makes the Stuff you Should Know from the abyss. How
you doing, man, I'm just doing great. Everything is totally normal.
Everything feels comfortable and fun, so I'm good. How about you?
Have you done anything really weird in the last two weeks? Uh?
I think a more legit question would be, what have

(00:44):
I not done that's that's weird? What's the weirdest thing
you've done? I'm trying to think like I shouldn't have
said anything, because I really haven't done anything that weird.
Have just been more like, um, I've developed this weird
kind of I guess it's indigestion, which I don't get.
I have like an iron constitution, but I don't know

(01:06):
if it's because I've been pounding vitamins lately and they
keep lodging in this one spot in my esophagus. I
think there's a weird bend in there somewhere um, and
so I constantly feel like I've got some throw up
just sitting in the middle of my chest. That's a
new development. And I've noticed that when I don't take
vitamins it still happens. So I'm I'm kind of up

(01:28):
the creek on that respect. And I know that's not
doing anything weird, but um, I mean, I guess that
aside from that and setting out box traps for coyotes
and then eating the coyotes when I catch them, those
are the two weirdest things, right, It's not bad. What
about you. I haven't really done anything weird. I shaved.
I shaved my head, but that was just because I
was bored and hot. Nice Britney spears. Yeah, I mean

(01:54):
I haven't. You know, usually do that once a year,
and I haven't done it in a few years for
some reason. So, yeah, it has been a little while
you've been rocking the grown out stuff. I know. I
thought about shaving my beard too, just for funzies, but oh,
I don't know. I think now is the time to
try these weird things where no one's gonna see you
for six weeks. Yeah. As a matter of fact, after

(02:14):
we get done recording, I have a date with you
me to go cut my hair because I've got the
COVID hair. It is really long, real, it's just out
of control. You know that point where when you grow
your finger nails out too far and they just turn
that corner. Well, you wouldn't know it because you bite
your fingernails, right. I quit biting my fingernails a while ago. Okay,

(02:36):
so so maybe you've experienced this. There's a point, and
it can It can happen within an hour where they're
just too close to being too long, and then all
of a sudden they turn this corner and you can't
go like another minute with them being unclipped. They just
feel so gross all of a sudden. That's how my
hair feels right now. I think the corner of your
fingernails turn is called the tip of your finger start

(03:00):
wrapping around. Yeah, man, so, um, I guess we're talking
wastewater treatment then obviously with all this fingernail talk. Yeah,
and I gotta say, um, who did this one? Did
Ed put this together for us? Ed did this with
a high fever from what I understand, right, non non
COVID related, we should point out, Yeah, he was just sick.

(03:23):
He came through. He's doing Okay, he's on the mend
um but yeah, he he turned this in. He's like,
I I had a fever when I wrote this, So
it might not make that much sense, but it did.
I think it did, But I do we should say
if you work in wastewater treatment. What I did find
out doing supplementary research was that there are clearly a
lot of like there are almost fifteen thousand treatment plants

(03:46):
in the United States, and they're clearly a bunch of
different ways to do it. Because I saw a bunch
of other different stuff. So let's just say what we're
going to talk about is one way that it can go. Yeah,
and we'll probably touch on some of the other ones
that you know people use, but there's just no way
we could cover everything. And the other thing that I
saw too, is there's a UM there's a real sentiment

(04:09):
that the United States, in particulars infrastructure for treating wastewater
UM is aging really rapidly, like we need to do
something about it soon. I saw some some some watched
all groups that we need to spend about two billion
dollars to upgrade our wastewater treatment around the country. Somebody
else has six billion, but everybody's saying, wait, wait, wait, okay,

(04:31):
that's great because we're using really antiquated methods that work.
They work pretty well, but they're having a lot of
trouble keeping up with um. The jones with the Jones
is yes, because the jones is now. Because we live
amongst like plastic everywhere they poop and pee plastic, they
throw stuff in antibiotics into their toilets. There's like a

(04:56):
different world than the wastewater treatment plants where built to
to handle like in the in the early and mid
twentieth century. This is like a real opportunity to update
our infrastructure as we rebuild it. So hopefully we'll be
doing that hopefully. And you know what, two billion doesn't
sound like a lot of money. I thought I was
going to hear a number like one trillion. That's what

(05:18):
I would have thought too. I was actually kind of surprised.
I went back and looked, and now they were talking
about the wastewater treatment. So I don't know if it's
I know that some of the technologies are very expensive,
and maybe they're saying to rebuild as is, it would
be two hundred and forty two six hundred billion, but
maybe to to implement some of them more high tech

(05:39):
stuff that that has come along in the last few years,
maybe that would be a little more high dollar. All right,
well let's talk about low dollar, okay, by way of history,
because at the beginning of wastewater treatment, well you can't
even call it wastewater treatment, it was just calling It
was basically like how we dealt with wastewater. We weren't
treating it at all. The very most rudimentary thing that

(06:01):
you still can see in places our outhouses and latrines,
which trine is just an outhouse or an outhouse is
just a little trine with a little a little bit
of privacy involved. Yeah, and you know what, I was
looking up out houses. They're still around. There's like composting
toilets and urine diverters and all sorts of like hippie

(06:22):
stuff you can get into if you want. But one
thing I kept seeing was, you know, like there's always
like a crescent moon cut out on the outhouse. Uh, yeah,
I've seen those. It's like almost synonymous with an outous.
It looks weird without one to me. So I looked
it up and it turns out that back in colonial times,
when um, there was a preliterate population. The crescent moon

(06:47):
indicated that the outhouse was for women, and a star
cutout indicated it was for men. The mystery from never
had any any idea. Yeah, I learned that visiting Mount Vernon.
That would be a good place to learn that for sure.
And George Washington's just had a big cutout of a
marijuana leaf. He is only for him. Yeah, he'd come

(07:10):
home from working in the fields and Martha would have
a big bowl, big fat bowl waiting for him at
the end of the day. Very nice. Uh So if
you're talking about twentieth century, you would think like, yeah,
but surely when we got to the twentieth century they
were really handling the sewage properly, not so at all. Um,
just you know, it was well into the twentieth century

(07:32):
when we still had suburbs with people living them in
them with no sewer connections and outhouses and this was
this is kind of hard to believe, but I guess
in more rural areas. But that even says suburbs. Yeah,
he made it sound like basically if you went into
like um, I don't know, uh, Dunwoodie or something like that,

(07:53):
which is a suburb of Atlanta. Okay, you would have
found out houses in the fifties, which maybe that's true.
I don't know. I mean, if you think about it,
a septic tank is really just kind of a fancy
ladrine pit. Yeah. But it's interesting too because in uh
like six b C. There were places that, you know,
it's funny because it seems like there's a lot of
advanced thinking in ancient times that goes by the wayside

(08:16):
for just thousands of years and then it comes back.
But in what is now modern Syria, they actually had
drainage pipes and stuff that fed wastewater from the outhouses,
uh basically to the streets and rivers. So it's not
like it was great, but it at least got it
out of there. They didn't have a lot of follow
through on their ideas. Great first idea, and then they
were like, I just forget it after that pretty much.

(08:39):
But hey, have you ever heard why things were like
possibly more advanced or very advanced early on and then
they went dark for a little while. I feel like
we talked about this before. It must have been the
Enlightenment episode, because it's them. It was the Dark Ages
the Middle Ages when the Church took over and basically
said science can can burn hell. Amazing, that works. Yeah,

(09:01):
it's crazy. And then the Enlightenment came along and said, no,
science is back everybody, and we started to have like
sewage treatment again, which I mean not coincidentally, that's around
the time we started taking sewage treatment seriously. And it
wasn't just that we like got a lot smarter all
of a sudden from the Enlightenment, which definitely was partially
the case, but there were way more people, and so

(09:23):
things like digging a hole in the ground, pooping and
peeing into it and then once it got full, you know,
burying it and digging another hole. UM methods like that
just became unsustainable. Or putting all of your sewage out
into the street, it became unsustainable just because there were
so many people. Yeah, and there was poop and p
literally everywhere in the streets and the rivers and the lakes.

(09:47):
And the first um sort of pushed towards treating the
sewage was literally just because the smell. Eventually they were like,
this is terrible to live amongst. Maybe we could do something,
Maybe we could throw some time or some charcoal or
some sawdust on this stuff, and at least and it
won't be safe, but we won't be like walking around gagging. Right,

(10:09):
They're like, at least there are some sawdust on there.
Some do something for God's sake. Sure, so they did
do that, right, Um, But that's still it still wasn't enough.
I mean, people were still just they they I think
in our Great Stink episode, Joseph basil Get was um
just revered as a saint basically for saving people by

(10:30):
you know, diverting um sewage into sewers away from people's
drinking water and stuff. But even still, I think he
was also responsible for helping design some of the earliest
wastewater treatment plants. But um still around the time and
into the twentieth century, like there it was basically like
here's a sewer, and then we're just gonna make the

(10:51):
sewer come out downstream of our of our drinking water supply,
and then problem solved. Sorry for Shelbyville, but exactly chew
on it, Shelby Bill chew on our fecal matter. But
but that was kind of exactly what happened if you
were down river, downstream or you know, on the other
side of the lake from this area. You know, you

(11:13):
got their poop in your backyard and you didn't want that.
So eventually people started realizing that there are things that
you can do to make water better and then put
it into rivers and lakes and streams and even the
ocean and seas. And that is basically where we're at
right now with wastewater treatment, which is we poop and

(11:35):
pee and we flushed stuff into the sewer, and then
the stuff goes into a wastewater treatment plant. We do
some stuff to it, and then we put out slightly
better than sewage water into the rivers and lakes and
streams and and hope for the best. Yeah, that's right. Um.
Some of the early things they also did was like
fled afield with wastewater. Uh. This allowed sedimentation, which is

(11:59):
the you know, the the feces basically settling, and then
actually the plants can help out. The plants take up
all that gross stuff as water that they used to
grow and it kind of traps it in there, which
is nice, But then you sell those plants to Shelbyville.
That's right, But it still didn't change, It didn't make
anything less harmful. Uh. As far as bacteria goes. So

(12:21):
that's why typhoid and cholera and everything was a huge problem.
And that's why wastewater maybe the biggest advancement in life
saving device like that in penicillin our neck, neck and neck.
I think, yeah, really, I mean, like just not being
around water that contains all sorts of harmful bacteria that

(12:42):
people pooped out. That's definitely going to improve your lifespan
for sure. And that that whole thing about putting sewage
onto a field and letting the plants deal with it
that's actually still around. That's like a that's a a
sensible way to treat sewage because not only do the
plan ants you know, take care of it, but as
it trickles down through the soil to the groundwater, there's

(13:05):
all sorts of microbes and minerals and all sorts of
ions that pick up that harmful stuff and that actually
purifies the water. The problem is is once you get
too many people, which can happen really quickly, that that
soil and those plants get overwhelmed and a lot of
bad stuff gets through and then you're polluting the groundwater.
So as more and more people came along, we realized

(13:26):
we had to come up with technology. We couldn't just
rely on soil anymore. Yeah. Um, Massachusetts was a little
forward thinking in a Woosta, mass in eighty nine, they
actually treated sewage with chemicals. Uh. And this is one
of the first chemical treatments for sewage in America, I think.
And that would cause these solids to clump together and

(13:49):
then settle out like obviously the fecal matter. Uh. And
that was good because bacteria is more uh more apt
to cling to the poop than it will to stay
in the water. So that helped for a little while,
and then for a long time after that they would
just sort of dilute the water with uh, with clean
water and say, well, it's this is as good as

(14:11):
we can do basically, yeah, which I mean again, that's
kind of what we're doing now. Whi's just the stuff
we're putting out now is way better, um, way less harmful,
and has way more stuff taken out than it did
in the nineteenth century. But that's ultimately, that's what I'm
saying that we're still working mostly on those premises. One
is that you, um, you you allow sedimentation to happen,

(14:36):
which is like putting sewage over a field and letting
the sediment settle, and then um, you use chemical or
biological treatments to filter out stuff that is left over
even after sedimentation. And that's again that's that's where we're
at today. It's just the techniques were using are much
more advanced. Yeah. And I don't think we even said
what wastewater is because I think a lot of people

(14:58):
might think that wastewater is just something that goes down
your toilet. Um. But wastewater is any kind of water
affected by human use at all period. So there's uh,
there's storm runoff. You know, rainwater is is wastewater. Um.
And you might think like rainwater is beautiful, it falls
from the sky and it's so clean. But this stuff

(15:20):
is running through cities. It's running, uh and especially in
cities because there's not enough dirt and grass to soak
it all up. So it's it's taking everything on every
urban city street in America and collecting that and taking
it with it. So fertilizer, pesticides, any kind of agricultural grossness,

(15:42):
road kill, I mean, just think about every disgusting thing
on the ground. And that's what stormwater is. And that's
why stormwater is treated just like it is, which is wastewater,
whole possums, tons of possums. Guns Apparently what I saw
one wastewater treatment explainer video and apparently a lot of

(16:02):
guns end up getting filtered out in that first big filter.
Oh my gosh, because I think people like, I don't
know if they're just murder weapons that people throw down
a sewer drain. I mean I would guess so, or
at least crime weapons. You know, it's kind of scared. Yeah,
you'd like to think like that happened one time somewhere,
not like that's a regular occurrence. That's nuts. Well, I mean,

(16:24):
I say a lot of guns. I don't know how
many guns, but it was enough for them to mention
that guns show up quite often, right. Um, the one
you were talking about, which is like all that that
wastewater that goes down toilet's the poop and the b
water that's actually called black water. I love that term. Man,

(16:45):
I'm gonna make some black water. Yeah, that sounds like
a like a hardcore cocktail that would involve Yeager Moister
and the Doodie Brothers. Let's work it out here, So
Yeager Meister okay, um, a little bit of simple surah,
very simple syrup, orange juice, fresh squeeze orange juice. How

(17:06):
would that be with a beta? Be awful with the
ager moister, of course, everything's gonna be off with you,
ager MOISTERA um and then a little um, freshly muddled basil,
little star and ease. Perhaps that's the black water cocktail.
Oh my god, that's terrible. Gray water is not as
gross as that by any stretch. This is all the water.

(17:29):
And we've talked about gray water in our eco friendly
episodes because a lot of households will reuse their gray water,
the water that goes down your sink or your shower. Um,
a lot of individual households try to recycle their own
gray water. If you're uh, you know, one of those
four thinking hippie dippie types. Sure, if you've got a
composting toilet out house in your backyard. Yeah, but generally

(17:53):
there aren't like big cities with huge gray water recycling
systems yet to predict that in the next many years
we will see those rise pretty pretty commonly. Yeah. I
hope so I do too. I mean, it's definitely about time,
like we waste water, like like it's nothing. Yeah, it's
crazy how cheap our water is, especially in the States.

(18:13):
You know. UM, there's also a couple of other things
that if you're a waste I think they actually they
don't call them waste water any longer. They call it
UM water resource reclamation plants, which I really kind of
drives home what we're talking about a little more like
this is this is something you don't want to just
pe away, you know what I'm saying, Like, this is

(18:35):
important stuff UM, And so they're they're starting to use
like that kind of nomenclature to to indicate how important
it is. But if you run one of these plants
where you work at them, UM, a couple of other
things you're gonna be on the lookout for. UM is
the um amount of pollutants that you're you have in
your your water at any given time, the amount that

(18:56):
comes through. And then in addition to storm runoff, black water,
and gray water, you're also on the lookout for industrial affluent.
And we should probably say real quick, um iffluent is
what most people call wastewater all forms going into the
treatment plant. Yes, not affluent, no, no, UM effluent UH

(19:18):
is is all wastewater if you're not in the know.
If you are in the know, Effluent is what a
water reclamation treatment plant puts out. The treated water is effluent.
The all the untreated stuff that comes in is influent.
That's right. But I think if we say effluent, we're
probably just gonna be talking about it in general throughout

(19:39):
this episode. Yeah, and you know you mentioned industrial processes. Um,
we should probably point out to that if you have
an industrial plant manufacturing something, you probably have your own
uh wastewater treatment system on site. You don't just dump
all that stuff and say here, county or city deal
with it. You have to clean that stuff first. Just

(20:02):
in that really gross still gross water to the city.
Probably depends on your mayor if he's spineless or she's spineless.
That's true, Mayor Quimby, he wouldn't. He wouldn't let it
happen because he was spineless. He'd let it happen because
he was getting kickbacks for it. Oh man, my favorite.
I don't know even know if I can say this

(20:22):
on the air. Okay, should I? Do? You know the line?
My favorite? No? No, I wait to hear it. We'll
edit it out if you can't. All right, I can't
remember which episode, but it was when everyone was freaking
out about something and Quinby came up to the podium
and said, calm down, everyone, I know, well, all we're
all frightened and hawny. Yeah, that's right. I think that

(20:43):
was the comment episode where the comment was headed towards Springfield.
We're all frightened and horny, so funny. And then he
introduces Professor Frank, and Professor Frank goes a good evening everyone,
and somebody stands up. He goes quit stalling what he goes, Okay, alright,
sit down. Oh man, I missed that show. I do too. Um,

(21:07):
you want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a
break and we'll talk about how this stuff is treated. Okay.

(21:35):
So we've basically we've talked a lot about wastewater up
to this point, Chuck, and I feel like we should
talk about it some more. Yeah, And uh, let me
point something out too real quick, because Ed said in
here that, um, wastewater treatment plants is not water that
you're going to end up drinking. That is not fully true. Um,

(21:56):
in in water challenged places in the world. Uh, they
don't like to call it this, but there are treatment
facilities where they can go toilet to tap um places
like Australia, Singapore, Namibia and then New Mexico, Virginia and California. Uh,
they convert this stuff back into potable water. And it's

(22:20):
pretty great actually because they've said, uh, it's shown that
it actually has fewer containments contaminants than existing just like
what you and I are drinking in Atlanta. Let's say,
yeah for sure, because they put it through such a
rigorous process that from what I saw, Singapore actually has
to remix it with rain water so that it'll get

(22:41):
some of like the local minerals in in tar War
basically because they strip it. They strip everything out. It's
just like water molecules and that's it from what they
do with it. And the one in Singapore I was
reading about. Did you read about that one? They seem
to be like the leaders of the pack with this stuff.
I think Singapore is especially challenge with water supplies. Yeah.

(23:02):
So they actually, um, they came up with something called
new water any W water and any W is capitalized.
It is just a great great little like word and
and spelling and everything. Um. But they also in addition
to just coming up with like a bang up water
filtration system or water reclamation system. They also had a

(23:23):
bang up PR campaign and got everybody behind it. You
totally do. There was a town I can't remember in
um I can't remember the name of it in Australia
where like they needed to do this and it got
sunk because some people started speaking out against it. All
of a sudden, the city council started turning changing their minds. Um.

(23:46):
I think Malcolm Turnbull forced a referendum to try to
gain favor with some of the residents there and it
was just a big mess. But this paper was basically
demonstrating side by side, you know, how bad it could
be and how good it could be, but a big
port of talking people into drinking water that somebody else
peet out at some point or was contained poop at

(24:08):
some point. Like you really have to be committed to
it and have a united front and basically show the
science saying this is harmless, there's nothing wrong with it.
It's it's more pure than anything we're feeding you now,
So just try and Singapore was apparently very successful with it. Yeah,
you really have to do that. Um I saw other

(24:29):
places where they say they try not to make a
too big of a show of it. But sure, I
think the opposite. I think you really got to like
educate people so they know that this this water is
safe and taste fine, and I mean it's it's a
miracle of of modern technology. You know, it really is.
It totally is. And um, I'm with you, Like, I

(24:49):
think that's one of the things you need to be
upfront and and transparent about not letting people find out
the hard way. Yeah, a new water is you know,
that's a great way to go because if you notice,
new water sounds nothing like fecal water. No, no, it
sounds like new coke. Right that hit. Yeah, So um,

(25:12):
all right, let's follow this uh this stuff like if
you um, let's say it's raining one day, we're standing
in a sewer now chuck, Okay, you don't have it.
By the way, what we're about to describe takes about
thirty six hours, depending on cool. So we're standing right
outside of a sewage treatment plant, a water reclamation plant,

(25:33):
and we are knee deep, our glosses are on and
we're standing there and all this water is coming through.
It's raining, so there's um stormwater runoff. I'm sorry, I
only have the one pair for him that's so gross. Um,
and there's a possum floating by because because there's a

(25:55):
stormwater runoff, maybe there's a gun over there. Um. People
are pooping and peek, so there's black water all around
us as well. People are taking showers, so there's gray
water coming through. I could not stop thinking about corn
when I was researching this. Yeah, like, what at what
point does corn get filtered out? So about we're about
at that point. One of the first things that all

(26:16):
this water is going to do is go through a um,
a pretty good sized fence, right, and that's gonna hold
back all of the big stuff, the possums. The tree
branch is probably a gun unless it's a real tiny
little you know, old gambler's derringer, right, and all this
stuff is gonna get caught up on a fence and
eventually somebody's gonna come along and scrape it off, sell

(26:38):
the gun, eat the possum, um, who do who knows
what with the tree branch, and then um just basically
keep it clean for other stuff. That's that's the very
first step that really before the water ever even goes
into the plant, it's going to pass through one of
these grates. Yeah, or there may be like a vertical
conveyor system. So some so, some unlucky individual doesn't have

(27:01):
to scoop pop poop possums and poop guns out of water. Right,
A clean possum is bad enough, But one that's been
bathed in black water, that's not good. Man. We're making jokes,
but God bless those people who do this work. You know.
Oh yeah, for sure, for sure, hats off to them
because again they're keeping all of us safe and healthy.

(27:21):
It's right right, So well, no I'm keeping money. Um,
So we've gone through that first grade. Now there's another
series of screens that are gonna pick out smaller stuff
like you know, bits of tire or little um car
accident pieces that run off with the storm water. You
know I'm talking about were like, you know, there's this

(27:43):
all sorts of glittery stuff in the road. All that
stuff gets picked up and course saying that kind of thing.
And now you're talking. Now you've got some water that's
ready to be treated. Yeah. There there's uh something called
a grit chamber. Uh. They can be horizontal rated or
vortex um. The vortex ones are kind of cool ed

(28:03):
called it a hydrocyclone. I think it's the same thing,
and it basically just spins the water and slings all
that grit and stuff, I guess a car accident stuff
right out to the side where it's filtered out. Do
you remember at like the County Fair or whatever, that
that ride that was like that? Yeah, Six Flags had. Yeah, God,

(28:27):
it was called the what was it called? But yeah,
it's spun and then the floor dropped out from under you.
Yeah right, it was probably called the Black Water. I
can't remember. I did not like it, though, so I
loved it. Six Flags had one of those times. Yeah,
they got rid of it pretty quickly, and of course,
you know, you always get these Six Flags rumors. The

(28:48):
rumor was that some child didn't get slung out and
like got trapped when the floor came back up, which
may have been true for all I know, but I
just I don't like a dizzying things. Yeah. The trick
was to just keep your focus on something inside in
the middle, like the person across from you who was
moving relative to you, and that kept you from getting dizzy. Um. Okay,

(29:11):
so yes, so, but you can if you were so inclined.
And also I have to say, like reading all of
these different steps, I'm like, this would be kind of
a fun ride actually, to like slide through here. If
you're small, it's like you were just a little piece
of car headlight. To take it all the way through,
that would be pretty fun. So, um, now you've got
water that's ready to be treated. It's been um, the

(29:34):
grit's been taken out, the big pieces have been taken out,
but there's still plenty of stuff in it. And the
water is very turbid, right, there's a lot of suspended
particulate matter just kind of floating around making the water murky.
And this is where it enters what's known as primary treatment,
where basically, if there's any water reclamation plant anywhere in

(29:55):
the world, it's going to go through this stage at
least the primary treatment. Yeah, and um, I think it's uh,
you know, you think about during the daytime, there's a
lot more activity, so uh, these facilities aren't meant to,
um like, operate at full board during the day and
then be cool at night. Like they depend on a

(30:16):
very steady flow. And you know, pollution can't all bum
rush it when everyone goes and takes their morning poop
so they have these um, these holding tanks basically where
they can hold this stuff during the day that's coming
in and just sort of balance it out and distribute
it over a twenty four hour period so it's not
the system's never overwhelmed basically. Yeah, it's called flow equalization,

(30:40):
where if you imagine this is a river running through
they keep very tight control over the volume and the
speed and the flow of the wastewater that's going through
the plant, and so when that flow is exceeded, whatever
is exceeded gets diverted off to one of these holding
basins so that when the flow goes down, they can
move some from the from the holding basin into that

(31:01):
flow to make it so it's steady basically twenty four
hours a day. That's pretty ingenious stuff. If you ask me,
I didn't know that it is. Uh. And then one
more gross thing that we should mention. Yeah, we forgot this. Yeah,
grease and fat um. You know, restaurants use grease traps,
but there's still so much um industrial and consumer like,

(31:22):
you know, think about anytime someone pours grease down their
drain or oil down their drain in their house, which
you shouldn't be doing it. That stuff ends up in
the wastewater treatment facility, and it all loves to hang
out with each other and congeal up together. And there's
something called fat bergs that form, and remember the one
from London. Oh god, yeah, they're they're horrid. It's a

(31:45):
it's a huge, sometime multi ton ball of fat and grease.
And apparently they're really good at attracting um uh, flushable wipes.
Although you're gonna say the ladies, right, the ones that
have like gold medallions and chest hair stuck to them, Yes,
but the normal fat birds, the ones with glasses and

(32:08):
buck teeth, they don't. So disco stew versus cletus a
slight joke, exactly exactly. And I didn't know there's gonna
be so Simpsons heavy. I had no idea either, but
but yeah, I remember learning about fatberg's back in I
think it was two thousand and eleven something like that,
where London had one and and they were like, everybody
stopped flushing wipes, and um everyone said, no, you can

(32:33):
just get the fat bergs out every once in a while.
But yeah, that's that's horrid. But they have to get
those out, not just because the fat brigs are so gross.
But like you were saying, that can really screw with
the machinery in the UM in the water reclamation plant.
So I guess that would be after grit potentially. Yeah.
They go into these aeration basins and they basically just

(32:53):
inject a bunch of air in the bottom of the
tanks or not even tanks. A lot of these are
open air that you know, we'll mention that later. It uh,
it just creates bubbles and it aerates the water and
that kind of just works everything free where it can
float to the top so you can just skim it
right on off and slap it on a roll and
go to town. Yep. It's a great Mayo substitute. UM. Okay,

(33:17):
So now we finally enter this primary treatment. Although I
would I would argue that removing grease and fat or
I think the acronym is fog, fat, oil and grease UM,
that's part of primary treatment. But we'll say that it's
step negative point five. We finally reached step one, which
is where this turbid um uh water with all of

(33:41):
this kind of suspended particulate matter in it is going
to be dumped into a tank. Usually UM well, I
can't say usually, but there's like two main versions that
I've seen. One is a big round one, um, where
the water just flows into the middle and then just
kind of um slows down as it reaches the outside

(34:02):
of the tank the or the edges of the tank.
The other is a makes a little more since it's
almost like a big swimming pool where the water comes
in one end and slows down as it makes its
way towards the other. Either way, the point of this
is slowing the water down so that it continues to flow,
but flows so slowly that all those suspended particles have
a chance to settle to the bottom under gravity and

(34:23):
that sedimentation like we talked about, you know, way back
in the day, where they used to take sewer water
and put it over a field as it was trickling
through that soil under the force of gravity, that sedimentation.
We do the same thing today, except we usually do
it in a tank rather than a field. And then
we also may use some agents to speed it up,
like flocculating agents, which is one of my favorite words,

(34:46):
maybe a good band name, I'm not sure. Um. There's
also coalgulating agents, which is a terrible band name, and
they'll actually do what um, what they were trying to
do with the grease, which is kind of fluff it
up or make it attracted to one another and and
form larger solids that are way easier to get out
of there. And after this primary treatment, the water looks

(35:08):
pretty good, but you would not drink it because you
would die almost immediately of a horrible, terrible death. Yeah.
And the the key with these primary clarifiers, which are
these main tanks that they go into it first, is
there's something called settling velocity, and that's the speed at
which the particulate is going to settle. And we mentioned

(35:29):
earlier the flow rate coming in. The reason they have
to be just manic about how much stuff is coming
in there is because your flow rate of the time
can never exceed that settling velocity. So, in other words,
the stuff coming in can't be coming in faster than
all that nasty stuff can settle, right, right, And but

(35:51):
that nasty stuff does settle, and it forms what everybody
calls sludge. But what I saw, Chuck, is that it
is not the term of art these days. The current
term is raw primary bio solids, formerly sludge. That's the
full name of it r P B s are p

(36:12):
B f s s Oh that those are different words,
like formerly sludge is part of the name. Like they
changed the name of sludge to raw raw primary bioa
solids formerly sludge like Prince basically yeah, right exactly, the
aret just formerly known as Frits oh man lright b
yeah for real, Oh my gosh. So uh, things are

(36:35):
gonna stink. There's no way to get around it. If
you've been to a wastewater treatment plant, it's gonna smell. Um.
That's why they're usually not close to residential areas, although
there is one in Atlanta or on the West Side
that's just kind of right there. Yeah, I've never smelled it.
I haven't either. Um, it may be capped. Like if
you get complaints of odors, then basically, if you get

(36:58):
enough of them, then the city says, all right, we
gotta do something here. Yeah, maybe we need to put
a put a roof on this thing. It can't be
open air any longer, or maybe we need it. And
this is probably what they do. And the one on
the west side is they they treat that air. They
ducked it out and treat it. Uh you know, old school. Uh,
they basically take a bunch of toilet paper rolls and

(37:18):
stuff them with dryer sheets, like the old dorm trick. Oh,
I remember we talked about that recently. I don't remember
what episode though, how did we Yeah, yeah, um, yeah,
I can't remember what it was, but yeah, yes we did.
But if you work in one of these plants, it's
it's not gonna It's not like working at a tulip

(37:38):
farm in Holland. You know, it would be a nice smell,
although I don't think tulips actually smell, but yeah, I'm
sure it's still better than whatever everybody at these reclamation
plants are smelling. But you know what, tulip farmers and
Holland smell great, right they do. They have a musky,
earthy odor. So um, okay, so yes it smells. I

(38:02):
thought that was a cute, hilarious little like sidetrack included
in this for us UM. But this water, though, chuck right.
Once it's treated, primarily it looks fine, but it's not fine.
And for a very long time, like that was the
extent of water reclamation, you would scoop out the sludge

(38:25):
send that that primary um primary treated water out to
lakes and rivers, and then you go, jeez, why are
all these fish dying off? What's the problem? And the
problem it turned out was that we really needed to
add a second stage of treatment that even though you
couldn't see the bad stuff in there anymore because you've
taken it out, there was still plenty of microscopic material

(38:49):
that could cause all sorts of havoc on the body
of water that you release this out to. And they're
they're described by a term called um biochemical oxygen demand,
which is the amount of basically living aerobic bacteria in
this treated water and how much oxygen it will suck
out of that body of water, growing like forming an

(39:11):
algae bloom. And then as the algae bloom uses up
all the oxygen dies off, um the the bacteria that
eats those use up the rest of the oxygen and
kill off a lot of fish and a lot of
other wildlife in that body of water that you dump
that sewage into. And so as they kind of figured
out that there's this this this stuff you can't see

(39:32):
in there, that's still a real problem, We've added a
secondary form of water treatment and that's really improved things tremendously. Yeah,
so let's take another break and we'll talk about secondary
treatment and then eventually tertiary treatment right after this. All right,

(40:11):
So where we left off was uh and and we
should also say too that like there are probably out
of the fifteen thousand treatment plants in the country, I'm
sure there's are still some that stopped at the primary treatment. Yeah,
I'm I'm positive too. But which is like, you can't
like that's that to me is an ecological crime. It's

(40:32):
an environmental crime. Oh absolutely, because it's so damaging to
two water resources. It's just and in wildlife resources too.
It's just it should be a crime. It's not yet,
but hopefully it will be soon. Oh absolutely. Um. So
secondary treatment is key and if you're if you're working
at a modern wastewater treatment facility, then you're definitely gonna

(40:54):
go with secondary treatment. I'm not sure the what year
they started coming around it, um And actually I can
tell you something. So yeah, they're the main process of
secondary treatment is called activated sludge and it was developed
starting in nineteen twelve. Okay, so there are still some
that are behind the nineteen twelve barrier. Wow. Yeah, So

(41:20):
in the secondary treatment This is where, um, it gets
kind of interesting in a chemical way. You talked about
the algae blooms, which are no good, so to prevent
stuff like that from happening. Um, what's going on in
this water is they're all these uh what's basically going
on is aerobic digestion. They're putting things in there that
can eat this stuff. Right, it's crazy like that. It's

(41:44):
beneficial bacteria to the rescue, which is just wonderful. Like
they're using. This is that biological treatment we referred to
earlier where they're saying, hey, there's all this bacteria and
all these other terrible um like little by products and
things that we don't on and they're everything from like
gasoline molecules to whatever um. And there are different types

(42:06):
of bacteria, protozoa, even tiny tiny, tiny little invertebrates um
that live in the water most most of the time
are microscopic and they'll eat this stuff. And if we
feed them this treated sewage, they'll make it even even pure.
And that's that's the secondary treatment, which I just love.

(42:26):
And we've been doing it for over a hundred years now,
well most of us have been, I should say, yeah,
And it's crazy to think about. When you look at
a wastewater treatment plant, they have about these cool mechanical
processes going on, but they're also growing, essentially and uh,
living things there that are their little work buddies. They're
their little cohorts that do part two. And they have to, uh,

(42:49):
they have to foster life for these micro organisms, I
assume on site. Right, Yeah, but from what I saw it,
it's kind of like a self aiming thing. Right. Well,
there probably are a few sea monkeys mixed in there.
I wouldn't be surprised. But from what I saw, with

(43:09):
activated sledge, you're actually taking bacteria that's already alive and
eating the stuff in the sewage. You're just fostering it
by pumping air and more specifically oxygen into the mix,
which mixes the stuff up but also gives them oxygen
to like really kind of be powered by. And so
they really go to town eating this. So not only

(43:31):
do they break down during this activated sledge process, these
these beneficial bacteria not only break down the stuff you're
trying to get out of the water, they also multiply
and create more and more bacteria, so that part of
the activated sledge processes after being treated for several hours,
you move that treated secondary treated water out and then

(43:52):
you take the sludge that you let settle to the
bottom and pump it back through for another round, because
you've got all new bacteria that was produced in that
last round. And so it's kind of like this nice
circular closed system that is so effective. I saw that. Um.
Usually at night they have to skim off some of
the bacteria that's been produced that day because it's usually

(44:12):
so successful. Yeah, and I think they even pay someone
to stand there and go, what do you think of that?
How about one more round? It's a miracle. Every every
six hours after treatment process goes through, they just shout,
it's a miracle. So we're talking about like bacterial membranes,
like a sheet of bacteria that might churn through this

(44:33):
one of these basins, or maybe an algae sheet or
something like that. And you know, you gotta, like you said,
you gotta keep this stuff alive. So the pH is important,
oxygen eating like you were talking about. The temperature has
got to be regulated. Um, you just have to make
sure these these little uh, these little booger state healthy
and happy. You want them to be happy as can

(44:54):
be and as long as you're pumping oxygen there and
making the pH the way that you want it or
the way that they wanted, they're they're going to be
happy and reproduce and multiply and go forth and spread
the gospel. All right, So that is secondary treatment, and
that is apparently it gets to the point where the
United States has said, fine, dump it in a lake,

(45:18):
dump it in a river, dump it in the ocean.
It's perfectly. But then if you're if you really want
to kick things up a notch, you can go for
a tertiary treatment. This is just showing off. It really is,
isn't it. Another word for it is uh disinfection or

(45:39):
polishing um. And this is pretty interesting because you wouldn't
know it, but there are tiny little things ranging from
parasites to antibiotics, and we'll talk about all these a
little more detail. To microplastics, like there are microplastics and
some soaps or just larger plastics that break down and

(46:00):
some of that stuff gets through these first two processes
and there's actually plastic in the water. Yeah, I'm guessing
Emily doesn't use plastics in the soap she makes for
Love Your Mama, Plastics, No, Um. But I had no
idea until I read this that that was the thing.
But it makes sense so like that that I guess

(46:21):
the exfoliating stuff. It's not all crushed walnuts, shells or
anything like that. Like it would make a lot of
sense to use all of this waste plastic or it
makes sense, and I guess the strictly business sense. But
these plastics that they can be filtered out, but they
can also be broken down to this point where they're
they're microscopic as well, and so if you're just doing
primary treatment, you're sending a lot of those microplastics right

(46:43):
out the other side, and that's allowed them to kind
of spread throughout the entire food chain. I saw this, Um,
I think it was a front line just the other
night on plastics, and man, it was eye opening, Like
we need to do an episode on plastics. I've been
wanting to for a while, but this one kind of
lit a fire under my butt. Um. But it I mean,
it's it's just everywhere, and so much so that not

(47:04):
just washing up on beaches, but it's in the water
we drink, right. So one of the things they figured
out is there are types of bacteria that eat plastics.
So now they're trying to figure out how to cultivate
those bacteria. And that's another thing to what what we
were saying with that secondary treatment like activated sledge. It's
not just one kind of bacteria. It's a huge microbiome

(47:27):
of bacteria that eat all sorts of different things, specialize
in all these different things. But when you have a big, huge,
diverse colony, you can get that much more stuff out.
And so there are some bacteria that eat my microplastics.
Then I also saw and this to me is the future.
It's um ozone oh three, three oxygen atoms put together,

(47:49):
and that's that from what I saw, Chuck, it handles
every single thing that you would possibly want to get
out of water. Yeah, so with ozone, what they'll do
is they'll send it in a tetrical charge through the
water and these O two molecules disassociate from one another
and then recombined to form ozone oh three. And it's
just a kind of a superhero occident that does a great,

(48:13):
great job killing bacteria. I saw it as more like
a coked up John Belushi just running through a room
or something like that. That's how I saw it, because
it's like it just goes in there and and messes
stuff up. Like anything it touches, it just starts to
break down. UM. Because it's so reactive that it basically says,

(48:37):
give me an electron, baby, and that whatever it just
took an electron from starts to fall apart. Yeah. You
can also chlorinate the wastewater. UM. You know we've talked
about chlorination before. Uh. It works pretty well, but it's
not like a disinfectant. UM, and the chlorine itself can
break down into toxic substances, which is not good because

(48:58):
then you gotta go treat that other tertiary methods and
that's no good either. That's right, like chloroform I think
is a byproduct of it. And then there's UV radiation,
which takes a ton of energy. Uh, it can be effective,
but it's really expensive. Yeah it is, UM, but it
does work. I mean most things do not stand up

(49:19):
very well the UV radiation or UV light. UM. We
have one of those phone um cleaners, a UV phone cleaner.
You have you seen those? Yeah? I saw those on
Shark Tank many years ago. Oh yeah, So, UM, I
can't tell if it works or not, but I think
it's does. I realized it's kind of a matter of

(49:39):
faith here, but it makes me feel good. Um. And
then there's another one called reverse os moses, which I
think deserves its own episode, or at least needs to
figure in like a desalination episode or something. But it
is um basically using a membrane that is so small
only water can pass through it. So when you push

(50:00):
sewage or treated water or anything um through this membrane
on the other side, water comes out. Everything else is
left behind. And what I saw about Singapore's new water
is not only do they use that very expensive, very
effective UV radiation, they also use reverse osmosis in addition
to microfiltering to produce this new water, which is why

(50:22):
it's like so pure that they have to add it
back with you know, rain water to get some of
the minerals back into it. Yeah, reverse osmosis works rejects
I think nine percent of bacteria. Los Angeles and some
other cities are using this, like we said, cities that
have water shortages. Generally, it really depends on not only

(50:43):
this membrane but tons of pressure UM up to six
hundred pounds per square inch, very highly pressurized, and if
you want to get what they're calling i p R
Indirect potable reuse, which is eventually you can drink this stuff.
I seen all kinds of problem. I mean, I guess
this new water, that's what their aim is. But you

(51:03):
you take your tertiary tertiary tertiary tertiary treated water, you
hold that in a reservoir for a while, then it
goes through osmosis, then it's treated with either UV or
ozone or both. Then it goes back to a reservoir
for about six months for just natural processes to go
to go to work, and then it gets sent just

(51:26):
through the regular standard water treatment that everyone else's water
goes through. Wow, that's like l A's doing that. I
think if if you're doing i PR right, then you're
doing many of these steps in concert with one another
and then sending it through the regular system in the end.
I'm sure there are different ways in different places, but uh,

(51:49):
it's pretty amazing that you can you can drink water
that goes down your toilet eventually, and it's probably better
than a lot of city water. Yeah, oh for sure. Um.
One of the things that that got me chuck um
was that we still do that thing where we take
that sludge and spread it over um farmland, create those

(52:11):
sewage farms. So everything's kind of come back full circle again. Um.
And we also use semi semi treated water for like, um,
like like you're getting parks and stuff like that. So
there's like a there's there's um a lot of good
uses for for water that's not quite indirect potable reuse quality,

(52:34):
but can it is still like good enough you just
wouldn't want to drink it, yeah, or you can just
dump it back into your local river lake or something
like that. Yeah, that's always great. And then the just lastly,
real quick, UM, the future of this stuff that I
saw is that they're getting so good at filtering stuff

(52:54):
out that they're like, well, wait a minute, we're accumulating
a lot of this plastic um, so let's start collecting
it and selling it for reuse, right, which is which
is wonderful because I mean, otherwise they're just diverting this
stuff to a landfill. Or they're getting so good at
getting like phosphorus or nitrogen out, well, let's make a
sideline of selling fertilizer to farmers or something like that. Um.

(53:18):
Rather than adding more to the water supply, will just
reuse the stuff that didn't get used the first time.
And then um, they're also reusing cellulose fiber from used
toilet paper, and that amazing is amazing. So they're filtering
out cellulose that was part of toilet paper at one point,
and they're using it for everything from insulation to roadways

(53:40):
I believe, which I didn't know they used cellulos and roadways,
but by god they do now. So that's wastewater treatment. Everybody,
one of those great engineering episodes that we do from
time to time. I hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, I
got one more. We always like to think of our
friends in New York because that's sort of the gold
standard of huge city doing amazing things. And there are

(54:04):
fourteen plants in New York City alone, and they how
many gallons of water per day? Do you think they treat?
Just take a stab? One point three billion gallons of
water per day? Wow? I was apparently the statistic I
saw said, if you that is enough over eight years

(54:26):
to fill the entire Dead Sea with toilet water. Wow,
which you should not do. Don't do it the dead
Sea special. Do you got anything else? They've got nothing else? Uh, Well,
if you want to know more about wastewater, just show
up at your local wastewater treatment plan or you're sorry,
your water recap water resource reclamation plant and they'll probably

(54:46):
give you a tour, especially if they're friendly types. And
since I said that, it's time for the listener, mayo, Yeah,
show up and say I want to see the artists
formerly known as sludge, right but also doing a really
like kind a hostile demanding way. Yeah. Absolutely, Um, all right,
I'm gonna call this from a teacher. We love hearing

(55:08):
from our teachers here during the worldwide lockdown. Now that
Georgia is finally on board. Yeah, they just found out
that you could be a contagious and not show symptoms yesterday.
I'm so angry about that. It's nuts. My daughter literally
knew that before our governor said he did. Yeah, for
probably a good month, I would guess. Probably. Yeah, you

(55:31):
should listen to our show. We talked about it last week,
well in real time, weeks ago by the time this
comes out. All right, So this is from a teacher
named j Alexander in the mathematics department at l h S.
Good morning, guys. I wanted to thank you for the
distraction episodes. As a teacher working from home, I've been
helping my one and thirty plus students and their parents

(55:54):
navigate this challenge while also making sure my two biological
kiddos are doing their work as well. With the governor
closing schools for the rest of the year, I woke
up pretty sad this morning. I'm sad for my seniors.
We didn't know the last time we were together would
truly be the last time. I was thinking about that
the other day too, man, Like, that's just it's all sad.
But seniors and prom and last day's school and all

(56:18):
that fun stuff is just to to miss that as
it just sucks. Yeah, it really does. Do you know
what they're gonna do? Is it like you're just gonna
continue on the rest of the year from home and
still graduate on time. I think everyone's just trying to
figure this out in real time. Man, My own daughter
is graduating from her preschool, so she's not going to
see a lot of these kids ever. Again, just super sad.

(56:41):
That's sad, but also congratulations. Yeah, well they're they're doing
these uh two times a week, these zoom meetings, which
is kind of fun to see all these kids on there,
I'll bet just crawling around not paying attention. They're actually
pretty locked in. It's it's very impressive. Oh really, Yeah,
their teachers are on there and they kind of are
in a rhythm. It's it's kind of cool to see.
That's cool, all right, so let's just continue here. I'm

(57:01):
sad for my own kids who won't see their friends
and teachers for the rest of the school year. I'm
sad for all my coworkers who are retiring this year.
They didn't plan for it to end this way, although
quite frankly, they may be pretty stumped early retirement. Uh,
they're definitely silver lining, zough. I'm seven months pregnant and
don't mind working in my pajamas. The weather is great

(57:23):
in your podcast is keeping me sane. So thank you
all so much for being my normal in this twilight
zone world. I pray that you and your families are
safe and healthy. And again, that is J Alexander the
letter J from the Mathematics department at l h S
and right back at you two from us to you, um,
thank you very much, and thanks to everybody out there

(57:44):
sending us good vibes. We're sending them right back out
to the entire world. It's basically like a d light
concert in here. That's right. If you want to get
in touch with us during this weird time or any time,
you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
it on the bottom, hit it with the lysol wipe,
and send it to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot

(58:07):
com m H. Stuff You Should Know is a production
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts. For
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

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