Inside the bowels of the wastewater treatment plant

Wastewater Treatment Plant Tour and Barbecue

If the words “Wastewater Treatment Plant Tour and Barbecue” don’t immediately sound appealing to you, or perhaps surprise you, you’re not alone. I admit, on paper at least, it is a very strange thing to be invited to. It wasn’t until finally arriving, seeing that (obviously) the barbecue portion and wastewater treatment plant tour portion were held in two entirely different buildings that I finally relaxed and accepted the event for what it was.

The Need for a New Wastewater Treatment Plant

The wastewater treatment plant run by the Upper Thompson Sanitation District is in need of repairs, and what better way to show this to the community than offering free food and a chance to tour said plant as a digestif. The Trail-Gazette previously ran an article on why a new facility is needed on July 20, suffice it to say the plant is simply old, built in 1971, and is ready to be replaced.

The Barbecue

The barbecue started across the street from the wastewater treatment plant, in a building that held vehicles and administrative offices for the Upper Thompson Sanitation District (UTSD). There were various tchotchkes being doled out on a desk out front, can covers that implored the reader to stop flushing fats, oils and grease (F.O.G., remember this acronym) down their drains and toilets, mugs with the district’s logo, chocolate toilets, those sticky hand toys but with a caricature of a piece of poop instead of a hand, chocolate toilets and the pièce de résistance: a toilet filled with Tootsie Rolls. Taking a chocolate toilet but declining a Tootsie Roll, I made my way into an open door.

Inside was a meeting room of some sorts, adorned with various standing posters extolling the virtues of the proposed water treatment facility. I dutifully took a picture of each poster as well as some pamphlets and made my way to one of the main events of the day: the food.

The offerings were standard American cook-out fare, burgers, hot-dogs, brats, baked beans, various fruit and accoutrements for the meat. They were pretty good, as well. For drink there was lemonade, unsweetened iced tea and various sodas. For dessert, a cake adorned with the UTSD’s logo; I was a little dismayed they didn’t take the cake decoration in another direction with all the toilet-themed memorabilia on the desk out front.

The Wastewater Treatment Plant Tour

Now down to business. Before the tour of the plant started we were all shown a nifty contraption. It was very expensive ($200,000) camera on wheels that more than makes up for the price tag. It allows workers to remotely see into pipes and inspect them for damage or other defects, thus helping to prevent the need to dig up pipes in order to work on them. The workers then explained how they can even fix pipes without digging them up (in some situations at least) which saves immense amounts of time and money, not to mention the headache of road closures and the like, something Estes has gotten very accustomed to.

Afterwards we were ferried across the street to the wastewater treatment plant, a grim, Soviet-looking building that is nonetheless the most important place in Estes Park; it is also probably the most scene wastewater treatment plant in America, nestled beautifully in a small draw with Rocky Mountain views. When the wind kicked up the expanse of grass that the building sits in rippled like waves on the sea.

The tour began inside the lab, which was a picture-book example of what a laboratory should look like, filled with whirring machines, beakers a big whiteboard with numbers and Greek letters interspersed on it and vials of strange liquids.