BDD Operators and Maintenance Clean Sediment from Basins
BDD and SF County Operators Certify in Confined Space Training
The purpose of Confined Space training is to prevent injury to personnel by ensuring good planning and communication practices prior to and during entry into confined spaces during regular and emergency situations.
This training protects authorized employees who enter confined spaces and who may be exposed to hazardous atmospheres, engulfment in materials, confining conditions, or areas that contain safety or health hazards which may trap personnel. This valuable training enables staff to readily recognize a number of hazardous situations, test and monitor for hazards, especially atmospheric dangers, and work as a team to handle and respond to emergencies and evacuations. BDD staff along with Santa Fe County staff participated in the day classroom and hands on training.
Operators Get Down and Dirty to Perform Quarterly Floc-Sed Cleaning
Dirt particles, or sediment, that is removed from the water during flocculation and sedimentation processes settles in the base of the mixers and plate settlers. That content has to be washed out quarterly to avoid over build-up in that area.
Our operators work as a team and flush out the extra sediment regularly to provide for a more efficient water treatment process. Each quarter they drain and empty one of the 3-train tanks, then remove the tarp covering. They use high power hoses to flush out the thick sediment to be pushed to the sediment removal portion of the BDD facility. The operators gown-up and go down into the muddy “floc” and “sed” tanks to push the water from one end of the tank to the other. Other operators work from above hosing the sediment through drains.
After all the sediment is washed out of the tanks, the operators pull back the large tarps to cover the tanks to prevent additional debris, and wind blowing sand back into the processed water.
