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Why You Need To Get Involved in the PFAS Conversation
BLOG by Janine Burke-Wells, Executive Director
April 26, 2023
Thanks to NEIWPCC for sponsoring my recent trip to Presque Isle, Maine, and asking me to be the keynote speaker at the North Country Convention in early April. I jumped at the opportunity to speak to my friends and colleagues in wastewater and bring them an important message: Everyone needs to get involved in the conversation about PFAS and how it is impacting what we do! This is especially true in Maine where I have observed a lack of trust between the legislature and the operators, who I consider unsung heroes in this very important story! I have turned my comments into this blog in recognition of Water Week 2023.
First off, I want to start by thanking the NEBRA members who are in the Nation’s Capital, as I write this, meeting with their representatives to talk about biosolids (and hopefully using the handout (www.nebiosolids.org/reglegcommitteework) the Reg-Leg Committee pulled together for that purpose. These conversations are critical to ensuring our representatives “get it right” and enact smart, cost-effective policies on PFAS that do no put liability on passive receivers like local water utilities and limit the unintended consequences of PFAS legislation and regulation.
But everyone needs to get involved in the conversation about PFAS!
Other interests are framing the PFAS debates
Unfortunately, because of our industry’s tendency to be silent and reactive, others – like the Environmental Working Groups of the world – are skewing the reporting and headlines. Our voices are missing. We are always on the defensive and it’s exhausting.
There’s an old adage in the news business that goes something like: if they hear from you first, they trust you first; if they hear from you last, they trust you last. Like I said, I saw a lack of trust in Maine with the legislature, but I am hopeful that is changing. And kudos to all the clean water operators in Maine for powering through their situation!!
I am personally sick of talking about PFAS but it’s my job and I challenge you to make it part of your job too. It is our responsibility as members of the clean water community – and citizens of the world! – to get involved in the conversations, starting in our local communities. When you have to raise rates because of PFAS regulations, your customers should at least understand why they are paying more to manage their biosolids.
Trust is a crop grown locally
Charles Sennott, of the About | The GroundTruth Project, used those words during his keynote at the 2019 New England Water Environment Association (NEWEA) annual conference. It’s worth repeating: Trust is a crop grown locally.
Yeah, OK, that’s deep but what does it mean?? Well, first off, it means work. We need to get more proactive and work on engaging local citizens. And growing stuff takes time. Which is why it’s important to get started now! There are tools already developed for you to start a conversation with your customers! NEBRA is here to help you do that work.
We are talking about public relations and it’s more important than ever, thanks to PFAS. I suspect you already know this, but the general public is woefully ignorant as to what exactly happens after they flush their toilet.
Water Environment & Technology (WET) magazine had an article back in September 2017 about a survey by Indiana University (IU) Professor Shahzeen Attari and her research team. The team asked a survey group of 457 IU students to “draw a diagram of how water moves from source to tap and back to the natural environment.” Some drawings were elaborate and detailed. One would hope the majority of university-level students have a good understanding of the water cycle, but that was not demonstrated by Professor Attari’s survey. As if we needed more proof to reinforce what many of us have observed, the WET article concludes that the average customer “knows very little about the veiled inner workings of water and wastewater treatment.” Sixty-four percent (64%) of Professor Attari’s survey participants failed to include a water resource recovery facility in their drawing. If these survey results are extrapolated to the general public, we have another strong reminder that we have our public relations work cut out for us.
At first, I laughed at the drawing (see photo gallery, above) that included the flash of “MAGIC” in the water cycle. But then I had a second thought: Is it possible that people really do think that what we do is an illusion? If so, that could be a huge part of our public perception problem. Still, it is not all bad news, as the IU survey also found that people really do care about water quality and rebuilding our infrastructure.
Education Needed
Even though many people do not fathom how we do our “tricks,” they appreciate the results of the “magic.” We need to build on that and develop customer knowledge through public awareness campaigns that can be as simple as each one of us talking to our families and friends (our most “local” public) about what we do, why it is important, and what we can do better with public support. We cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand and let people continue to take clean water (and especially what happens with the solids) for granted. If every NEBRA member communicates within their community about the critical service your organization provides – and even if you get only one person in your public arena to appreciate your perspective -- we can make a huge collective difference.
Local news is the best news – and the best way to reach your service area. Invite people into your facilities! Engage with local news reporters. Use the bill stuffers (PFAS Outreach Materials - NEWEA - New England Water Environment Association) we have created with NEWEA to start a conversation with your customers now. Tell your story!
I suggest starting with the kids, they are always fun to interact with and they help educate their parents. As a bonus, you might end up encouraging a young person to get into the profession and we could sure use the help in the future. As part of my comments at the North Country Convention, I showed this clip of a young child narrating a tour of a wastewater treatment facility he had built with Legos: Wally's Wastewater Treatment Plant - YouTube. I have watched it dozens of times and it still makes me laugh! When I was working in wastewater operations, I would marvel at the size of the primary clarifier where it seems Wally used the majority of Legos. Now with my focus on biosolids/residuals, my recent views revealed a couple of problems with this virtual tour.
The first problem should be obvious to biosolids professionals: no mention of what happens to the solids recovered in this wonderful clean water process. Sure, Wally mentions grit, scum, and sludge. But he doesn’t say what happens to those materials – and the limited options for managing them. We need to tell that story!
My second concern about this video comes at the very end. Wally’s mother points to the Lego man figure on a ladder (climbing up to check on those humungous primaries) and asks “Who’s this guy?” Wally responds with “We don’t want to put that in the video.” That’s when I knew this kid is a wastewater operator by nature -- because he doesn’t want to be in the video!! We need to change that mind-set. PR needs to be part of every operator’s job.
We need all hands on deck right now. I encourage you to look for every opportunity to get your message out there and engage your local public – including tours, bill stuffers, quarterly reports, even complaints can be teaching moments. Your customers need to hear from you before they read about it on the internet. And especially before the introduction of legislation that is costly and counter-productive.
We need to make sure our perspectives are heard in the state and federal legislatures, where there’s not a lot of scientific and engineering knowledge. You already know what to say – you are the clean water experts in your communities! We are already working to get it out of the water cycle (even without compensation from the manufacturers). Source reduction works and everyone has a part to play in that. Pretreatment programs are effective and we are working that angle too. We are addressing the hot spots. We didn’t manufacture these problem chemicals, we don’t use them in our processes, we receive them from society and are trying our professional best to keep them out of our end products -- clean water and beneficial biosolids. We shouldn’t have to be on the defensive!!
So let’s make a concerted effort to invite people in, show them the magic!! If you’re interested in learning more, NEIWPCC is hosting a webinar (that I am helping with) titled Increasing Public Support for Wastewater Through Positive Outreach (NEIWPCC Training Schedule) including how to host a killer Open House. That training is scheduled for July 18th from 8:30 to 11:30 am.
Getting back to PFAS
I want to give a shout out to a couple of NEBRA members who have been doing very good work in educating their customers. That includes the Madison (Wisconsin) Metropolitan Sewer District’s terrific PFAS webpage: https://madsewerpfasinitiative.org/. And Phil Tucker, Superintendent of the York, Maine, treatment facility, who proactively seeks out reporters (oh my!) to tell York’s story. He was recently recognized by NEWEA with its Youth Educator Award. There are many more examples like Madison and York, and that gives me hope for the future.
My trip to Maine reminded me of the quote that I grabbed from a Matt Timberlake post when he was president of the Maine Water Environment Association (see photo gallery, above):
“The activist is not the one who says that the river is dirty, but the one who cleans it up.”
YOU are the real activists – now go out there and spread the biosolids word! Start a conversation with your customers about PFAS today. It might be difficult and uncomfortable work for a lot of you. But I guarantee you it won’t be boring and I think you will find it rewarding.
Back to School Reading?
A Book Review by Janine Burke-Wells, NEBRA ED
September 7, 2022
I got a signed-by-the-author copy of this book at the WEF Residuals & Biosolids conference in Columbus, Ohio. I was hooked by the teasers in the jacket cover:
“As science shows, it’s a fact: we’ve been wasting our waste.”
This book is all about our business on the waste side of life, particularly the wastewater and biosolids business. It is geared to the average person who, as I am sadly familiar, knows nothing about what happens after they flush. The full title says it all: The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste into Wealth and Health. For the most part, the book is focused on wastewater solids – our history with managing the waste product no one wants to talk about, how we are doing it now, and what the future might look like. The book also has several chapters about recent scientific developments such as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) and even fecal transplants.
The book turned out to be a real page turner and even made me laugh out loud several times. Ms. Zeldovich has a journalism degree from Columbia and writes about science in a way non-scientists can understand. For instance, in writing about fecal transplants, she compares the donor screening process to a “fecal beauty pageant.” Maybe that kind of humor is not for everyone, but we cannot take ourselves too seriously! The author writes about her grandfather’s homespun waste management system which gave her an early education into the power of her poop, lessons she has carried with her since her family emigrated to the US from Russia.
I was pleased to see several familiar names and read about facilities and processes I have only begun to learn about in my time at NEBRA. That included NEBRA’s Carbon Trading Committee Chair Bill Brower, formerly with D.C. Water (now with Brown & Caldwell) and Research Committee member Ajay Singh, co-founder and technical director of Lystek.
There were really no boring parts to this book. The one oversight I think is failing to include Vermont’s Rich Earth Institute in the discussion about urine diversion. I would give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. I am planning to gift this book to my family and friends. I honestly think the average person would find this to be a thought-provoking read.
Author Lina Zeldovich speaking at the WEF Residuals & Biosolids Conference in May 2022