Informal Science Writing

In Robert Kunert’s early days working at the Stony Brook Regional Sewerage Authority, he would swim in the maze shaped reservoir that held the disinfected wastewater before it was released. Now, thirty one years later, he is the one in charge of the no swimming signs that hang above the large, outdoor tank.

In those three decades, 51 year old Kunert has worked his way to the top in a place that most people would rather never see nor smell. “No one really pays attention to wastewater,” he says. “When water goes down the drain in one’s home, people really don’t give it a second thought.” But when they do, wastewater, also known as sewage, has a reputation for being stinky and disgusting.

As pollution increases and freshwater supplies begin to dwindle, wastewater treatment is becoming more and more important for society. “Without places like this, life as we know it would not exist,” Kunert says. Many treatment facilities in the US were built with the funding provided by the Clean Water Act in 1972. Now, many of these plants need updating, but the funding to do so is not always available. However, with the demand for water increasing, something will have to be done soon. “Wastewater and water in general undergoes a great ordeal before you are able to use it again,” Kunert says. “It’s not one of those things where we can throw it away and go buy new stuff – it doesn’t work that way.”

Water treatment is an essential process for the function of modern society, and ideally, most of it would happen in places like the Stony Brook facility, a small but modern and well-maintained wastewater treatment plant in central New Jersey that processes about 13 million gallons of water a day. As the plant manager, Kunert is a local expert. It took him 11 years and one day to complete all of the levels of training, but he has been a licensed plant operator since 1992 and has been continuing his education ever since by taking courses in related fields such as fluid mechanics and industrial wastewater. In 2007, he won the William D. Hatfield Award that goes to one plant operator from New Jersey each year. From starting as an entry level shift employee to his current “job of many hats”, he is familiar with all parts of the treatment process.

Kunert didn’t originally set out to work at a wastewater treatment plant. “Actually, it was accidental,” he says. After leaving college for personal reasons, he was laid off from his job and had to start looking for a new one. While applying to work at a grocery store, he met a guy who was looking for new employees for the Stony Brook plant. “He says, ‘What kind of work you lookin’ for,’ and I said, ‘full time sir’.” While it makes for a funny story, Kunert was serious about finding a position. A week later, he started his new job.

It was not love at first sight – the first few months were a little bit rough. “I’m thinking, good Lord, how did I end up in a place like this,” he says, looking back, “But it didn’t take me long to realize how fascinating this place really is.”

Even as an entry level worker, Kunert enjoyed learning about the various wastewater treatment processes, which require integrated knowledge of the sciences to understand. To get the water to flow through smoothly through the plant, workers need to know the basics of physics and fluid mechanics. About thirteen million gallons of water come to the facility each day, and it all needs to travel a path of nearly half a mile through seven sets of large cement tanks connected by underground pipes. During heavy rain storms, such as the recent Hurricane Irene, the flow rate can more than double, and workers have to be prepared to deal with the extra incoming water. If the plant overflows, the equipment gets washed out, making it difficult to resume normal treatment after the storm passes.

Bacteria are responsible for breaking down most of the waste, so it is also important for workers to be familiar with microbiology. Although many types of bacteria are used to eliminate organic molecules from the water, two specific types, Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter, are used to break down ammonium, which is toxic to fish. Kunert and his employees regularly examine the water from different tanks under a microscope to make sure that the correct microbes are growing and that harmful bacteria are not taking over. The most common problematic bacteria grow in strand shaped colonies instead of clumps. If too many strands start to grow, they can clog the pipes. The examiners also have to watch out for harmful microbes, such as E. Coli that need to be removed from the water before it is released.

To support the good bacteria and keep the others at bay, workers have to carefully control the chemistry of each tank. If the water becomes too acidic, all of the bacteria will die. Truckloads of chemicals such as magnesium hydroxide are brought in to make sure that this does not happen. The strand shaped bacteria start to take over when nutrient levels get too high, so workers keep them low by carefully adjusting flow rates to control the amount of time the wastewater spends in each tank. Thus to control the chemistry, an operator also needs to understand the physics of how the plant works.

As if learning all of the existing processes isn’t difficult enough, the equipment at the Stony Brook plant is constantly being upgraded. State permits get renewed every 5 years and “You got to go through it and see what you’re up against,” says Kunert. There are always new demands to be met and changes to be made. There have been construction projects every year since Kunert began working at Stony Brook. “You’ll never know all of it,” he says, and that is half of what has kept him in the field for so long.

What is the other half? He loves the job security. “When you wake up in the morning, it’s going to be there,” Kunert says. “When people stop eating, it’s over.” That certainly won’t be happening any time soon.

Most people would be wary of devoting their lives to such a stinky career. As Kunert puts in, “odor control is big in this industry”. However, the issue of smell is taken very seriously at the plant. Eliminating odor has helped them to maintain good relationships with neighbors. “We have spent millions on odor control over the years, utilizing the greatest technologies out there,” says Kunert. Aluminum tank covers, carbon odor absorbers, and odor control chemicals are all in constant use. A visit to the plant reveals that the smell is hardly detectable.

Surprisingly, visitors to the facility are fairly common. One of Kunert’s favorite parts of his job is giving tours. He enjoys telling people about what goes on at the plant. “This is one of those things I could talk about forever,” he says. Tours are an important part of what goes on at the treatment plant because they tell people about an essential part of society. “People don’t really know you exist until there’s a problem,” says Kunert, and it is nice to be recognized at other times too. He hopes that raising awareness about wastewater treatment will stop people from taking clean water for granted.

Although they are now gone, Kunert used to have pets in his office that he would take out for tours. He has had several tarantulas, and he had a snake for 14 years. The animals were always a big hit with kids, who would always mention the snake in their thank you notes. There also used to be a tropical fish tank in the office that was filled with water that had been treated at the plant. Kunert is proud to say, “We never lost a fish to water quality."