The team at the Heusenstamm sewage treatment plant can be happy: the facility receives an award for the good quality of its workforce.
Heusenstamm – The employees of the municipal sewage treatment plant are all beaming. Because state managing director Carsten Blech and Georgia Panagiotopoulou from the German Association for Water Management Wastewater and Waste (DWA) have just presented the Heusenstammer wastewater disposal team with the certificate as a DWA-approved training wastewater treatment plant. The city announced that the award was given for particularly effective improvements over the past three years and for the good qualifications of the workforce in the field of wastewater treatment.
Mayor Steffen Ball (CDU) and sewage treatment plant manager Tobias Mathieu are pleased about the special recognition: “The certificate confirms that we are on the right track and that our efforts and investments in the material equipment of our sewage treatment plant and the qualification of our staff have paid off.”
Eight employees are currently taking care of the needs of the Heusenstamm sewage treatment plant. In addition to the plant management, three electricians and two locksmiths are employed here for repairs, maintenance, servicing and plant services, a laboratory technician (analytics, measurement technology) and a technical clerk (administration) in their respective specialist areas.
The area of responsibility also includes various outdoor facilities, such as stormwater overflow basins, pumping stations and lifting systems, as well as the maintenance and operation of the sewer network (this includes, for example, rat control, sewer, gully and gutter cleaning and faecal sludge removal).
The status of a DWA-approved training sewage treatment plant dates back to the 1980s, when the operating personnel to be trained were taught the basics of biological wastewater treatment and laboratory technology in suitable sewage treatment plants.
Today, the operating staff have to face new challenges due to the significantly higher requirements for wastewater treatment (e.g. nutrient elimination, phosphorus reduction, further wastewater treatment, disposal and nutrient recovery, energy optimization and further development of operational analytics). Therefore, the catalog of requirements for a DWA training sewage treatment plant of the Hesse/Rhineland-Palatinate/Saarland state association was updated.
Among other things, the following requirements must be met: Minimum expansion size 20,000 inhabitants, technically appropriate equipment, very good efficiency (performance comparison), committed and well-trained staff who are also willing to devote themselves to the trainees, responsible management of the sewage system by sewage masters and /or Engineers, mechanical, biological and chemical purification stages, sludge treatment (digestion/dewatering), energy management and much more. The training sewage treatment plants assume the task of imparting the most important basics from practice to newcomers or career changers during an internship. This support and instruction takes place in addition to normal day-to-day business.
It is also worth noting that the DWA regional association has been supporting the further training work of the operating staff in so-called sewage treatment plant neighborhoods for more than 30 years. The operating staff of the sewage treatment plants in the district of Offenbach meet two to three times a year alternately at the plants in the vicinity of the sewage treatment plants in order to receive further training on special topics and to exchange experiences. The manager of the Heusenstamm sewage treatment plant, Tobias Mathieu, took over the function as supervisor of the Offenbach neighborhood in April 2022. (did)