October 31, 2002: Here are scenes from our very educational tour of the Fairforest Wastewater (i.e., sewage) Treatment plant in Spartanburg, SC.

Graham Rich, General Manager of the Spartanburg Water System and the Spartanburg Sanitary Sewer District, facilitated our tour along with Ed Neil, the facility's Chief Operating Officer (with 27 years of experience at the facility !). The plant is currently undergoing an $80 million renovation to install state-of-the-art facilities for wastewater treatment. Even so, the current plant and its workers have received awards for performance excellence.

Have you ever flushed your toilet and wondered where the waste ended up? Here's the simplified version of what we learned!

The "head works" shown above is where the raw sewage water enters the plant. The water is run through screens that pull out all of the big pieces of trash that people flush into their toilets! This smelly trash must then be hauled off to the landfill.

Then the wastewater is sent to large "ponds" where the thick water is aerated by large underwater "fans." This provides plenty of oxygen for aerobic bacteria and other microscopic organisms to live and metabolize (break down) all of the organic matter in the water (i.e., they eat it).

Then the water is sent to the clarifying filter (below) from which clear water trickles over the edge and solids settle to the bottom of the tank. Floating solids (the scum) are skimmed off the top as shown at the right. At the lower right, Ed Neil shows us how the water is then chlorinated to kill any pathogens, but explains how the chorine must then be removed from the water before it is discharged into the stream to protect wildlife.

The "biosolids" that have settled out of the wastewater are transported as a thick suspension for a final aeration in the tank shown below. It is then transported to a building where it is squeezed through opposing rollers of tough cloth. In this way the solids (a.k.a., sludge), now dry, are trapped out for landfill (or eventually land application) and the transporting water is sent back to rejoin the water in the clarifiers.