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Shawn: Hello and welcome to Make It Clear, a conversational podcast about all things related to water and wastewater. I'm your host, Shawn Rapp, and in each episode, I'll be joined by new guests and co-hosts as we tackle relevant wastewater industry topics with facts and expert opinions to make things clear.
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Welcome back. This is our first episode back from being on a summer break and we are so happy to be back with you guys. Just wanted to give a very brief introduction. I'm Shawn, I'm the host of the podcast and Darren Mendenhall has joined me today. He's our customer service manager. And Darren, go ahead and kind of give a little bit more about what you do and who you are.
Darren: Sure. So I'm the customer service manager.
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I basically oversee the team that supports all of our products on the phone, help where I can with training, sales initiatives, activities like that. I've been with the company now for just over, well, just over 11 years total. So yeah, it's great to be here, enjoy what we do. I think it's an important part of, you know, how water gets preserved. And it's a great opportunity to share that with everybody else. So thanks for having me.
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Shawn: Yeah, you bet. All right. Today's episode is all about wastewater in the news. And we've got a collection of several articles here, and we're just going to jump in and talk about these. These have all been sourced within the last, oh, month and a half, I think. And so these are fairly recent articles. And we didn't dig back too far. But yeah, it's… some days it's harder to find articles about wastewater that aren't about giant spills, which is unfortunate.
Darren: Yeah, it seems like it's happening all too often. But…
Shawn: Yeah, for sure.
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Darren: The articles we found were really quite exciting actually because it's a totally different direction of some of the neat things that are happening in the industry.
Shawn: Yeah, yeah, I kind of got that impression as I was reading through these and this is really kind of neat. The first article we're going to talk about is from MSN. This was from July early this month and talks about grants to help Scripps Research expand a life-saving wastewater program. And this was kind of an interesting article.
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This article is talking about how the Scripps research team received a grant for $2 million from the Gates Foundation to expand their wastewater-based disease surveillance system and develop AI-powered tools. And this was actually kind of neat. The stuff they've come up with is really kind of cool. The AI-powered tool that they have is designed specifically for doing research and for detecting anomalies in wastewater.
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And this has actually come a long way. This started back during the COVID days when they would use testing wastewater for COVID outbreaks. And they have since expanded this to include all kinds of things like tuberculosis, the flu, M-pox. There's a bunch of other stuff that they're wanting to add to this program and they're wanting it to go nationwide so that they can help determine areas that are susceptible to outbreaks as well as
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combat those that are currently in outbreak. So identify those areas that currently in outbreak. It's kind of a neat program.
Darren: Yeah, I think as difficult and troubling as it was for that time frame, I think some of the things that are coming out of that are the ability to really understand that we have capabilities now and tools that can help us determine and kind of
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create those algorithms to show or predict where something's going to happen and how that's going to go. And by understanding that wastewater is one of those sensors, now we can start to funnel some real interest in, I guess, monetary backing to support those initiatives and expand that. I, I remember back probably 15, 20 years ago, some of the local communities here were trying to track
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drug usage and things like that. so, you know, they were starting to kind of dabble in that, but without the financial backing and some of the support and tools to get some of the equipment, it doesn't seem like it really expounded too much where now we have that capability. The health aspect of it is starting to be much more proliferated to show that, you know, this is a viable opportunity to really protect communities without being invasive.
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And it's all, you know, obviously post consumable stuff that, you know, it's a little bit easier access. I think one of the things that really stood out to me is that the monitoring has kind of started to become less about privacy concerns and more about the public's health and how the utilities can address that in a way that
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doesn't invade people's privacy, but still allows them to gather that information and really see what's happening in the communities.
Shawn: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, I see that too. It's definitely something that I think the public is warming to. I know that there's always a lot of skepticism in the beginning. When you have programs like this, what's it going to do to our privacy? You know, we have concerns, that kind of thing. But I think as they show that this isn't as much of a concern as people originally thought it was.
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I think it's going to start rolling out into larger and larger areas and be more acceptable by society.
Darren: the benefit side of it too is going to start to probably reinforce that capability of people's acceptance and wanting to be more open to those types of studies and testing that happens at the wastewater treatment facilities.
Shawn: Yeah. And it's a huge benefit to society to get out ahead of some of these things too.
Darren: Yeah, sure.
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Yeah, and track trends and data and see if maybe there's some sort of pattern of infectious pathogens coming through that we can maybe start to see and find solutions that maybe warded off in an earlier stage instead of finding it after the facts.
Shawn: Right, for sure. The next article that we looked at was one called
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Study to Evaluate Powdered Activated Carbon for PFAS Removal. And that was from Wastewater Digest in the very first part of this month. And PFAS has always been something I've been kind of interested in. For those of you who don't know, those are forever chemicals. And they're really hard to get rid of. And so the Water Research Foundation, WERF, they launched a study to evaluate the use of powdered activated carbon as a potential, what they call near-term solution
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for removing PFAS from treated wastewater and effluent. The project aimed to provide utilities with real world performance data, cost estimates, and implementation guidance. So yeah, this is something that is kind of always piqued my interest because PFAS is actually very harmful. It's extremely harmful to the environment and to humans. And the fact that we've got so many of them out there, there's gotta be a way to get rid of it. We've talked about this kind of thing before on the podcast.
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I think any step we take to get rid of these things is a step in the right direction.
Darren: Yeah, 100%. I think, you know, one of the things that we've seen is that knowledge is key, I think. And the more this becomes a talking point, the more people are going to realize that, A, they need to be removed and B, they need to, you know, really figure out a viable solution that's going to be long term to prevent it. And I think they've
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the industries as a whole have started to recognize that. think there's still probably a lot more than what we would like to see going out into the consumables that we take. But I think, you know, as this forever chemicals becomes more prevalent, it's going to be something that people are going to take note of more specifically with wastewater treatment. A lot of it has focused on
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drinking water regulations and getting it out of drinking water. The water cycle itself indicates that you can't just tackle one. You have to tackle both on the drinking water side and the wastewater side. And I think the research that they're doing with this is going to help kind of combine that effort and really start to drive regulatory bodies to look at both sides of that. The other side of it is the industrial side.
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there's a lot of things that are still being allowed in the industrial waste that doesn't get captured in some of these regulations. So I think the study is great. think that we need to do far more research on this. if the powder activated carbon is really a viable solution, that's going to lower the cost, make it more of a factor in how we regulate this. It's going to have to carry over to the industrial side, too, and figure out a more economical method for that.
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It's still got to be viable and cost effective at the same time.
Shawn: Yeah. I think you hit on some really important points there because cost effectiveness has always been a roadblock for PFAS removal. It's expensive to do. And if we can find a way to do it less expensively that is just as effective, I think that's going to be a big boon to wastewater treatment. And then the fact that we've got a ton of wastewater treatment plants that are aging, the infrastructure is deteriorating.
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you know, as we try to upgrade these things, we need to find cost-effective upgrades as well to be able to remove PFAS. The other thing is that it's becoming kind of a looming specter, I guess you could say, in wastewater industry and government is really looking hard at tightening regulations on PFAS. And so if we can find a cost-effective solution that doesn't take a ton of effort to implement that is effective, that will help
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these wastewater treatment plants that are struggling to be able to implement those changes.
Darren: Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the biggest overarching themes here is again, the more it becomes relevant quote unquote relevant, the more money and, and studies that come out and research like this, that's able to happen. That is now not just experimental. It's actually…
Shawn: Real world.
Darren: real world evidentially based. That's going to show either
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A, it works really, really well, or B, it's a partial solution and we need to do more research to figure out an actual solution. So I think that's kind of one of the bigger aspects of this is that the research is starting to develop more questions, more probabilities, more opportunities to find things that are going to really start to push us in the direction we need to go, which is to get rid of it and get it out of the water system as a whole and not just
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continue to try to tackle it bit by bit.
Shawn: Yes, for sure.
Darren: One bit doesn't equate to the thousands of other bits that are still providing that influence into our water table.
Shawn: Yeah. You got to hit it at both sides.
Darren: Exactly.
Shawn: This next story really, I get kind of giddy when I think about this one. Microplastics are a black spot on society. I mean, honestly, it's… microplastics are horrible.
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And this next article kind of really got me excited about treating for microplastics. This is a story out of a place called the cool down. I'm not familiar with that source, but this was from earlier this month, just a couple of weeks ago, actually. And researchers at a university in Vietnam, I think it is, were doing research with some other universities around the world. And they found that
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by using micro bubbles and nano bubbles, they could remove 90 to 97 % of microplastics from water and wastewater. And that's a super cost effective way to do it because if you've got any kind of aeration or anything like that, that produces micro plastic or micro plastics, produces nano bubbles and micro bubbles, then you've already, you've already got part of the solution there.
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Darren: Yeah, yeah, I thought that was what was really intriguing to me was the idea that it's not going to take a huge amount of effort to really make this work. sounds, you know, through the article, there's just a couple small, I guess, tweaks you could say of how they're aerating that and getting the results that they're looking at. So, yeah, it's exciting. think, you know, a lot of times in my small box, I always think of a lot of this research happening
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either like in the UK or in the United States. But now we're seeing some of these other countries kind of bringing solutions to the table. It's super exciting because the problem is worldwide. We know it is. So to see some of these other universities and next generation leaders, so to say, jumping in and starting to try to find solutions and figuring things out and again, being cost effective and
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probably minimal impact to what's already happening, could start to see that microplastics contamination start to really take some effective steps in the right direction of removing it and treating the wastewater in a way that's gonna get rid of a lot more of that. Cause we all know that those microplastics are damaging fish, wildlife, all of that, not to mention polluting our waters.
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that we intake. So it's a whole ecological disaster that could be prevented. with the studies that they're doing, it gives me lot of real confidence and hope that maybe this is going to be a solution that really takes hold and gets that out of the system. It starts to really be able to be a viable opportunity. excellent, excellent article.
Shawn: This next article, we've talked about this before too.
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resource recovery in wastewater, which is becoming a thing. I mean, there's a lot of industry that's pointing toward this and being able to recover those resources from wastewater like ammonia and other things that can be used for other purposes. And so this one was talking about it from a new source called Interesting Engineering. And this was from early in July. The title of the article is German researchers remove ammonia from wastewater.
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Which, and that's a thing for a lot of systems as well, is trying to get rid of that ammonia and trying to clean all that up. But researchers at Ulm University developed a pilot system that removes ammonia from wastewater sludge side streams using a stream, I'm sorry, steam stripping process. It's kind of interesting way to do it. The technology not only removes ammonia, but concentrates it into ammonia water that has potential to be recovered as a resource.
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Really interesting.
Darren: Yeah. I think again, you tie this to some sort of financial side of it and it starts to, you know, get some traction. You make it into a recoverable that somebody may be able to get some revenue from. Now it makes it even more exciting, you know, cause now it's not just, you need to treat this and remove it. But now if you can create something recoverable, it could be a channel for
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return on that investment. I guess the ROI of it that we you know as Companies across the world are trying to be profitable and stay in business, this kind of gives an ideal opportunity to maybe recover some of that cost of actually meeting regulations and things like that So…
Shawn: This has a lot of implication too for areas that are nitrogen sensitive like certain or not. Sorry, ammonia sensitive such as estuaries and places where
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eutrophication might be an issue. That's a real boon for them as well. I know we've talked before about how the future of resource recovery is going to be wastewater treatment plants generating their own power instead of relying on power from the grid and recovering nutrients from wastewater and all that stuff. This is just another step in that direction. I think this is fantastic.
Darren: Yeah. And the idea of steam stripping seems to be interesting.
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You know, not being an expert or knowing much about it, just reading some of this. You know, it's a really interesting process that they're trying to implement and make it work. And it seems like they're getting some good results. And I think one of the biggest things is that targeting the citrate is what they talked about, the high ammonia liquid generated during the sludge dewatering process. So if they're targeting that higher ammonium liquid,
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with good results through the steam process. That seems like that's the best target point. Then you can move from there into other viable opportunities and get that capture and turn it into a commodity maybe.
Shawn: Yeah, for sure. This last article kind of wraps up and ties everything together. And I think it was probably the most interesting article that we had in here today. But this one is from a source called the Seven Seas Group.
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and it's on the future of wastewater treatment trends in 2026. And a lot of really interesting stuff in here. So what they were hitting on was on decentralized treatment, water reuse, the increasing pressure of regulations, greater focus on efficiency and emission reductions, and alternative infrastructure financing models, which is something we don't talk an awful lot about. But treating wastewater is expensive and creating
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and developing new technology is expensive and bringing new plants online is expensive. So… and especially if we're talking about remediation of old systems and trying to rehab aging infrastructure, I think this is altogether very relevant.
Darren: Yeah, for sure. And I think that's kind of one of the key things that caught my eye you know, Orenco as a whole has been on the forefront of this for years of decentralized sewering
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how do we create viable treatment methods for communities that aren't either in a financial position to afford a large scale treatment plant or the onsite industry, if they're getting to a point where they're not allowing onsite systems, how do we create that mechanism to still have viable wastewater treatment solutions? And that was kind of the thing that stuck out to me in this article is, you know, in
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2026, we're still talking about this as a viable solution where Orenco has been really involved in this industry and leading the charge since the early nineties, roughly. it kind of reinforces that idea that yes, we know there's the viability of this, but now it's starting to see a little bit more traction. People are starting to see that if we're going to continue to provide housing,
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which is in a great demand, obviously, and we're going to expand outside of areas that have sewer systems or centralized sewers, then how do we do that in an economical way and provide the systems that are going to be long-term solutions and not just a temporary opportunity until centralized sewer gets there? This becomes...
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the solution and not just a side effect or an afterthought or maybe just a preliminary band-aid, so to say.
Shawn: Right. And I think we're seeing that in the industry is this turn away from very costly solutions to decentralized. I think it's been a slow turn, but I think we're starting to see that now and come to the point where that's a viable choice that is coming first to mind for people and not just an afterthought.
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Darren: Yeah, for sure. And I think you you've touched on it a couple of times already, but the aging infrastructure that we're seeing, it's across the board. I mean, you're talking bridges, highways, sewer systems, treatment plants. I mean, all of these things compound. And I think municipalities are starting to realize that strain on revenue and choices are having to be made. Do you fix a bridge for people to transport
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back and forth or do you put your resources into an aging treatment plant? I think that's going to be kind of one of those breaking points of how does the funding get divvied out and what are the solutions, especially again, when we're talking about urban expansion and growth and some of the things that will really start to strain the budgets are those expansions and
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if there's viable solutions, which we know there are because we create them here at Orenco, how do we get in front of the people and really make this start to become the way to go? And I know that the team here at Orenco does a fantastic job of, you know, implementing their sales techniques and meeting with engineers and designers and regulators and municipal leaders and
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I think we need to be doing more of that and this article really starts to expand on the importance of it. It's no longer just like, well, there's an option. This is a solution is really worth seeing. I think that's going to help a lot of small communities, especially when we're talking, you know, two or $3 million projects versus $40 or $50 million projects.
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You know, it gets me excited because I see a viable opportunity for the industry as a whole to start to capitalize on this need that we've been kind of gearing up towards and really shining a light on. But now that we're starting to see a lot more attention to it, it's going to be far more magnified. And I think people are going to start to see this and really maybe
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drive towards that solution mentality rather than just an alternative that will be temporary.
Shawn: Right. One of the things the article talked about wasn't just the changes that are coming, but the things that really haven't changed as well. So it highlighted a few things like the fact that activated sludge still remains widely used. Clarification and filtration remain core technologies, which is still true.
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reliability still matters more than novelty. I think that was an interesting thing that there are a lot of things that are seen like, well, just like what Orenco used to be seen 15, 20 years ago, it's a novelty. It's not, you know, it's not a mainstream solution. Whereas nowadays that's kind of shifting.
Darren: Exactly. Yeah. I think that again, it kind of the, the
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monetary side of things start to drive those conversations to some degree. And I think more and more people are becoming aware of the viability of these products and like you said, not becoming a, or not still being seen as a novelty.
Shawn: Yeah. Another thing too, is that we're starting to see a lot of inroads with new development. So we've got developers that are putting in new communities and things like that.
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new housing projects, that kind of thing. And they're starting to see the value in things like modular growth, things like water as a service, you know, things like that. And that's really driving some of this as well. And so I think that this all becomes much more important as we go on. And over time, we're going to see quite a bit of a shift away from some of these older models into something that's a little, even though it's old technology, it's still considered new technology. And you can't see my air quotes, but…
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Darren: Yeah. I think one of the things too, that if you look at the overarching theme of what most of these articles talked about was the idea of testing and the ability to kind of utilize wastewater as a resource analysis, all of the things that go with that. You know, decentralized sewer systems actually provide an opportune time to do that because it's collected on site and then moved.
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you know, it's not all coming into one stream and then being tested. So I think the viability of these research projects also should be included in those conversations of how important is this? How do we implement this in a way that still maintains privacy? Cause we all know everybody's concerned about privacy, but also a way to allow us or allow the municipalities to have regulatory
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influence into testing, you know, all of the things that we talked about and give it the viability to do that in a real-time basis and not just getting to a slurry and then taking it. I think it could provide a lot of huge benefits in that aspect too as we've seen some of these testing studies and things that they're doing that's really beneficial for
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society as a whole, then we can implement that into, you know, driving some of these wastewater technologies that allow that more effectively and efficiently.
Shawn: Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, anything else you want to add?
Darren: No, I think, you know, I think where we're headed as an industry is exciting. I think with the focus being on innovation and growth and protecting public health, I think
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we're positioned in a way that, you know, we can really bring solutions to the table. We have the capabilities, we have the brain power here in our company to drive this further. And I think as we develop and create more opportunities for people to see that, regulators to start
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you know, bringing together all of the resources that are available. I'm hopeful that this is going to be a changing point and we can start to see a lot more growth and really water quality improvement. You know, I know we've done a lot in the past to drive that point home, but I think at the end of the day, that's still the mission is protecting the world's water. And I think this is exciting to see some of these opportunities that are starting to evolve that have
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come about maybe from some of the things that we've done in the past, you know, it's pretty interesting to see where this is coming from and where it's headed down to and how we can be involved as an industry leader.
Shawn: All right, well thanks for joining me today, Darren.
Darren: Yeah, thank you, Shawn. This has been great. I hope people see some benefit in it and that they will actually go out and
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maybe look these articles up and read them because it was pretty exciting to see some of the work that's being done.
Sahwn: Absolutely. I'll try to put the links in the description for the episode. But yeah, thanks for being here. Sure appreciate everybody listening in and check out our other episodes too. Like I said, this is our first one back from our summer break and we've got five years worth of episodes in our catalog. if you found this one interesting, we've got a whole bunch of other episodes, well over a hundred that are just waiting for you to discover.
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All right, thanks, and we look forward to another chat with you soon.
We want to thank you again for joining us today. Before you go, don't forget to subscribe where you listen to podcasts so you're notified when new episodes are posted. Also, if you have any comments or suggestions, you can leave us a message through the contact link on our website, www.orenco.com. Until next time, have a great day.