On Thursday, December 11^th  about 40 members of the Northwestern Indiana Operator’s Association (NWIOA) met at the Gary Sanitary District for some fantastic fried chicken and all the fixin’s.  Oh, yeah Barb Smith of Wastewater 101 spoke at this meeting as well.  Some of the facilities and towns represented were: Gary Sanitary District, Lowell, Michigan City, East Chicago, Crown Point, Westville, Portage, Bremen, and Griffith.

Nitrification/Denitrification was discussed from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.  Then we had a fantastic lunch followed by a discussion of Secondary Clarifiers from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m.

The NWIOA members are an awesome group of people and they really made me feel right at home.  I was even more impressed that no one fell asleep after lunch, which in itself was cool.  Then at the end of the day I people told me they actually learned something which is the best feeling in the world.

This was the first time I spoke for NWIOA and I hope it won’t be the last time they invite me back.  I would recommend to any operator, lab tech, collection system operator, water operator, anyone in the field to join NWIOA and make it a priority to attend their meetings.  Many times even if the topic isn’t something you are interested in, by attending the meetings you have the opportunity to speak to others in the field and discuss problems, offer solutions and just meet others.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to spend a great day speaking about my passion to people who were interested in hearing me speak.