The Paris News

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.

And plant superintendent J.P. Hinkle and the 15 other workers at the Paris Wastewater Treatment Plant are more than up to the task. Around the clock, the crew works to turn an inflow of 4 million gallons per day of untreated waste from the City of Paris back to environmentally-friendly water.

As Hinkle said, wastewater is not something the average person thinks about — everyone just flushes the toilet and moves on — but treating wastewater is absolutely essential to maintain a healthy environment.

The waste treatment is completed through a biological process, Hinkle said.

“We provide the aeration in the water and bacteria to remove toxins, fecal matter, even paper and wood. These bacteria will digest it eventually,” Hinkle said. “A lot of the bacteria are the same bacteria that decompose leaves and compost piles. There are some other special bacteria, but the majority of them are compost bacteria.

“Basically we just create a safe environment for the bacteria to grow,” the superintendent said.

Wastewater goes through several stages during the process, including clarification, primary treatment, disinfection, de-chlorination, screenings and preliminary treatment.

The end result is crystal clean water as it rushes from the plant into Hicks Creek, then into Pine Creek and from there into the Red River at a rate of 4 million gallons per day — the same as the inflow rate.

During the treatment process, wastewater is run through a number of stations, in large part in underground pipes. Although dependent upon the rate of inflow into the plant, Hinkle said it generally takes between 24 to 36 hours for wastewater to be completely processed and released.

One of the most visible steps in the process, aeration, is toward the end of the process. The brown water running through the concrete channels might seem far from disinfected, but Hinkle said it’s cleaner than it looks.

“The reason the water is brown is because we grow bacteria in such mass quantities that you can actually see the coloration in the water,” he said. “I wouldn’t even want to guesstimate the number of bacteria out there in these two channels. There’s billions and billions if not trillions and trillions of bacteria out there.”

Discs keep the velocity in the channels, keeping the water moving so bacteria comes into contact with “food,” Hinkle said, adding the water moves at about two feet per second, strong enough that it would be difficult to swim in.

Hinkle said the plant was originally constructed about 1944, and belonged to Camp Maxey as part of its treatment facility. Two pumps still in use were part of the original facility.

“There is concrete out here that was poured by German prisoners of war,” he said.

Working at the plant requires the experienced staff to maintain and repair plant equipment on a regular basis. The crew runs three eight-hour shifts and the station is manned continuously year-round.

“All my operators are always on call,” said Hinkle, who has worked at the facility for the past 17 years. “I can’t tell you how many times I drove out that gate and didn’t even make it to the highway before I had to turn around and come back in here and work for two or three hours or through the night.”

“Anything that happens out here, we do everything humanly possible to correct it,” he said. “If we have a line break and it takes 12 of us out here for three straight days, working with no sleep, that’s what we’re going to do. Our primary goal is to protect the public — whatever it takes. We have a lot of pride in what we do.”

Working at the plant is a dangerous job a lot of times, Hinkle said, because of large quantities of hazardous materials, including chlorine and other harmful chemicals as well as heavy machinery and equipment.

“It requires an exceptional amount of attention to detail,” he said. “It’s not a job that you can just nonchalant do; you have to be thinking all the time. You are around equipment that could cut you in half in a split second. It’s a dangerous job at times, but we use every safety precaution we can.”

Many of the buildings contain hazardous chemicals, which can build up, Hinkle said. One of the buildings is outfitted with an alarm if chemical levels get too high.

“We’re so far out of town, a lot of the sewer before it even gets out here is septic,” he said. “Septic sewer produces hydrogen sulfide, methane, stuff like that. We have to carry meters in when we go in and if the gases are up too high we have to put on air packs just like the firefighters.”

The aging facilities are repaired and replaced as necessary, most often by the skilled staff — something not common for crews at other wastewater treatment facilities, Hinkle said. He has workers with a construction background as well as electrical and drafting experience.

“That’s unusual to have,” he said. “I’ve got 16 people out here and I’ve got all that experience.”

A good example of staff effectiveness is the chlorination/dechlorination facilities, state-of-the-art when they were installed in 1991 and now obsolete, Hinkle said. They will soon need to be replaced because replacement parts are no longer manufactured. Hinkle said his crew is capable of installing the new equipment and saving the City of Paris about $20,000.

“This equipment out here is older than Methuselah,” he quipped. “We do our very best to keep it going.”

The wastewater plant is heavily regulated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which requires constant testing, Hinkle said.

“We have several different tests that have to be run,” he said. “It’s rather expensive; my budget is in the tens of thousands just for testing. We (municipal wastewater facilities) are regulated more than industries. They can get away with stuff we couldn’t even begin to get away with.”

The plant also recycles some of the water, re-chlorinating it and using it to wash roads and for other housekeeping needs at the facility.

Solid materials collected from wastewater are compacted and dried out before being transported to the landfill, Hinkle said.

Although he said the crew sees a little bit of everything run through the cleansing process, one of the most unusual was a string of $100 bills — or at least pieces of them — after a major five-county drug bust about 10 years ago.

Share | Save | Mail | Print | Letter

Serving Northeast Texas and Southeast Oklahoma

A Southern Newspapers publication.