Welcome everyone to the Innovation Flow podcast. Thanks for being here today for this episode. We have a special guest, Jamie Eichenberger of South Platte Renew here on this show. Thanks for being here, Jamie.

Yeah, happy to be here. Good morning.

Yeah, we've been. I know you were on episode at weftech right after you started, so we wanted to check back in and see how Park's going, what any developments, any new excitement that going on and just check in, see how things were going. So maybe if you could introduce yourselves to the listeners, give a little history of where you've been and how you got to where you are now.

Yeah. So Jamie Eichenberger, I'm the deputy director of engineering for South Platte Renew. Been here about six months now. Spent the last 20 years in consulting, working for some different companies around the Denver area. Got into the water industry in college, went to Colorado School of Mines and spent most of my career here in the Colorado area.

The Ordig. Yeah. Yeah.

So the football team's gotten a lot better since I was there.

Yeah.

Yeah. So still live right down the street. But along my professional career, I worked on a wide variety of water supply, drinking water, wastewater, pretty much anything water other than stormwater over the course of that 20 year career and in parallel with that, also did a lot of work with our local professional societies. So got my start with Rocky Mountain Water Environment association and then continued on with WEF where I got to serve as WEF president a couple years ago. So that was great. Gave me a little bit outside of just the Colorado bubble. Really good idea on what the national state of the water industry looked like, as well as the opportunity to go and see what some of our international water utilities are doing too. So that was really exciting coming off of that. One of the things I found was loved all the work with WEF and Mission driven organizations and so saw this opportunity at South Platte Renew and, and I'd known Peter Van Rye, our director, for quite a few years and so called him up and was like, hey, what is this? Do you think I'd be a good fit? And things moved quickly from there. But yeah, one of the things that drew me over here was the park program, frankly, and the focus on innovation that South Platte Renew has, that was a, that was a big selling point for me. So I've been enjoying it.

Cool. Did you have, with your, your national, you know, being the president of WEF and your national exposure, have you seen, have you had experience with other research type or, you know, innovation research type efforts in the industry.

Yeah. Seen what a lot of different utilities are doing around innovation, and it's been really exciting to see just this growth in focus on research and innovation over the last, you know, 10 plus years especially. Regulations keep getting tighter. We need new ways of addressing them. So seeing what they're doing. But I did, like, I think it's South Platte Renew and our pilot and research center, our park program approaches a little differently, which I'm sure we'll get into here in a little bit, but. Yeah.

Cool. Yeah. Well, we're super excited to have you. I know you've been. You've been here now. How long has it been now?

Right out of six months.

Six months. Okay. Perfect time for a check in. But before we get to the check in, let's get the icebreaker question. So the icebreaker question for you is if you had a walk up song, you know, like at Coors Field, the Rockies will have a walk up song while they're going up. If we had that while you were walking into the wastewater plant, what would your walk up song be?

Regulator sworn G. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

How does that go?

It was a clear black night, a clear white moon.

Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. I like it. I like it.

I think my team might say wrecking ball, but yeah.

Nice. All right. That's a good one. All right, well, let's jump right into park. How have you been integrating yourself in what's going on with park? Give us the down low.

Yeah. So starting here had a pretty steep learning curve, just figuring out all the things that we've been doing. So I started with South Platte Renew, actually at weftech and was at the park booth and looking at our site map that showed 30, 40 projects that we had had going on over that time. So when I got back to the office, I immediately started digging in, seeing where those were, what projects we had, started getting my head wrapped around it. And I'm still occasionally surprised by a new project that we had said yes to and is now getting off the ground. Especially some of the projects we're doing with Water Research foundation and some of the local universities. Sometimes it takes a little while to get the funding going and those. So it's been a steep learning curve just understanding all of the work we're doing because we are doing such a wide variety of park projects and obviously the wastewater process ones are really cool, really interesting for us. But we're supporting Water Research foundation has a couple on critical valves. So working with our partners over at city of Inglewood on both the water and wastewater side together, some of that information, putting together costs of infrastructure, replacement for pipelines and other projects, and then working with some of our other divisions in SPR that are looking at workforce development and some of those types of things. So we have this just really wide portfolio across innovation and research that we're supporting. So just getting my head wrapped around that has been a lot of work over the last six months. I think I'm finally getting a handle on some of it, but the job's never done. We're out there really trying to. We get approached every day by more people who are interested in coming in and working with us and trying to set that up, get our contracts in place, work with our team, work with our lab folks, make sure that we're not overwhelming them with additional requests, some of those sorts of things. And doing all that coordination has been a learning experience. Starting to develop some processes and things to help that move a little quicker, too.

Yeah, yeah. As it gets more popular, we might have to learn how to say no better. I guess we haven't said no up to this point too often if we can accommodate the project or it fits, you know, with. With what we got here. But, yeah, it's. At some point we might have to say no. Huh.

At some point. Not yet. Yeah, that's. That's probably what I'm worst at. So we. We like to always find a way to say yes. So. Yeah.

Cool. Well, have you made any. Any changes to the PARC program or any. Any directional changes as the lead of. I don't know if you mentioned your deputy director of engineering. So park falls under that as a duty, as a, you know, you're in charge. So have you made any big changes?

You know, a few things that we've been. That I've been working on. One of the big ones is just to make sure that we're using it to its full potential. So when I ride. We just wrapped up one pilot trailer that was out on our Park Liquid site. So that site, we have room for four kind of research trailers to come in. We've got the hookups ready for them, the electricity ready for them, got a drain line there just really set up to help remove some of the barriers and friction from the process and help that. Yeah, so we've had pretty consistent trailers out there, one or two at a time over the last several years. But when I came on board, my goal was to get that full. So I've been doing a lot of outreach, talking to people about what we see as some of our needs talking to people about what they need to see. And right now I've got four open spots, but I've got our first trailer coming on Wednesday. We have a second trailer coming at the end of the month. We're going to have our own research trailer that we're in the process of building out ready to go here in the next couple of months and then we have a couple more. So I've got five trailers right now slated for the summer that we're going to try to squeeze into our four spots. So we're getting creative.

Campground's getting full.

Yeah, yeah. So we're going to start looking at some overflow parking and see what we can do. But in addition to that, we have one trailer on site. It's actually at a kind of a satellite site from our actual park liquids testing site just to be closer to one of the processes that's up and running. And then I have two other more bench top research projects that, that we're going to support as well. So we should have at one time, we should have eight projects going on for kind of what we've got commitments on right now. So yeah, really excited.

Yeah, yeah. And it's easy to see when, well, you know, trailers are big. But yeah, all the, all the other bench top kind of smaller scale research stuff, that's good stuff too.

And I think so that's been one change, just really ramping up that program trying to fill in all of our spots and get to this point where we have to start saying no. So I think we might be getting close, but not there quite yet. One of the other things is just overall helping to reinforce this park idea and culture around the facility. We have this park site and I think a lot of times people get focused on a park project is a trailer at our park liquid stream site. And really this is just some of the culture around innovation that we have. And while it may kind of fall under my purview as deputy director of engineering, it's not an engineering program. It's really everyone here. So I mentioned we've got research projects going on, workforce retention and recruitment strategies. We have things on cost estimating. We're supporting some data and regulatory work. So kind of across all of our different groups, we're working on this, our operations and maintenance team. We've had a couple of projects that have come out of that that have been really innovative. I think Caleb, our process maintenance manager has been on to talk about our mill and lathe project and some of those and like those are really innovative, cool ideas. And this is what we want is just people coming forward with, hey, what are the things that we can be doing better to treat wastewater more efficiently and to remove some of the barriers from our day and just kind of advance the state of the wastewater industry. And certainly as that relates to process, but also as it relates to just our ongoing operations and maintenance, how our workforce works, our public communication and outreach, all of those aspects. So really just trying to break down some of those barriers to make sure this isn't a, you know, my engineering group owns the PARC program, but it's really something that's spread across the organization.

Yeah. And I think that's one of the, one of the great benefits of it is getting everybody involved. We're doing a show in the future with the lab folks about their involvement in it and we've talked to other groups about. Everyone gets involved, everyone has an opportunity to be a part of this innovation. So it's great.

None of these can happen without the lab team for sure. They put in a lot of work behind the scenes making that happen. And they're always good about saying yes, yes, yes. And so I'm actually pulling together a summary right now and I'm like, I know you said yes to everything individually. I just want to make sure you guys know what this is going to look like for all eight of these hidden at once.

So. But yeah, what is. Maybe talk a little bit more. You talk some about it, but kind of your general philosophy or what do you think about the need for innovation as an industry? You know, what do you think about that?

Sure. So we've been treating wastewater for a long time. Activated sludge had its hundredth anniversary not too long ago. I think we just passed 50 years on the Clean Water Act. So we've gotten pretty good treating wastewater. But the regulations keep getting tighter. And as science advances, we find out that the impacts from what we do every day, how that impacts aquatic life, public health, downstream drinking water and recreation uses. And we're in a spot where we're seeing those regulations get tighter and tighter. Yeah, we've got a lot of the low hanging fruit. So now we're going after the more challenging problems and we have some ways to address those now. But a lot of them are really expensive. It's a large capital investment. There's a lot of ongoing costs for energy, they're labor intensive. There's a lot of chemical that gets involved. So finding ways to do these more efficiently and more environmentally friendly too. You know, everything we Do. We're stewards of the environment. We're here to protect the rivers, here to protect public health. But a lot of times we're hit with competing objectives. So if I want to remove phosphorus, I can add some chemical and get that done. That might also result in increased sulfates or chlorides or tds that may have some unintended consequences downstream or for nitrogen removal and supplemental carbon. We use a lot of methanol at our facility. You know, there's greenhouse gas emissions from having to truck that in. So if there are ways for us to become more carbon efficient, for us to convert to more biological processes, do some of this stuff in a more efficient way. We can both improve water quality while also addressing some of those other larger kind of one environment concerns that we want to, that we want to look at. And one of the biggest ways for us to reduce, especially like carbon footprint that is not to build additional infrastructure. So finding ways within our existing concrete, within our existing basins, how can we make those processes work more efficiently? So I think it's absolutely necessary for us to continue innovation and research, research to meet the problems we have today without some of these kind of externalities and other environmental impacts that aren't directly related to water quality, but maybe impacting air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. And that I think is really important. But then also we're going to, we continue to find new things too, that we need to worry about. So I think PFAS has been a big, the latest example where there's a lot of concern around that microplastics is

something that's come down the road lately.

We're hearing increased concerns about increasing salinity in our waterways. So there's a lot of emerging challenges and we don't expect those to ever stop, let alone anytime soon. So being able to get out there and really advance that research is important.

Cool.

One more thing I might add to that is I think a lot of programs see an immediate need where they need to meet a pending discharge permit limitation or something like that. And they're like, all right, we're going to bring in these three emerging technologies and see which one works best for our facility. I think there's a lot of value in that. We are in a really fortunate position here at South Platte Renew, where we have some, some capacity so we've got some room for growth where we don't need to do anything. Like today. We're in a good spot from a regulatory compliance standpoint, always looking to see how we can do it more efficiently. Keeping ahead of some of our aging infrastructure, but we don't have any immediate regulatory deadlines, so we have a little bit of breathing room to try some things out. And I think that's one area where PARC really differs from some of the other innovation programs I've seen is really here to help facilitate research, and not for any specific direct need, but just to advance research in the wastewater industry in general. And one of the ways that we like to talk about this is like a venture capital portfolio. If I try 10 things and nine of them don't necessarily work for our facility, but one of them does, and it allows me to defer $80 million in capital for putting in a big biological nutrient removal facility or something like that that is more than paid for the rest. And those other nine that may not have worked for us doesn't mean that they don't work. It still helped to advance the. The state of science, the state of research, and something that we may find a use for down the road or one of our other kind of sister utilities can look at and use there. So we really see a big need just to innovate, and we believe we'll see that come back to us in spades over time.

Yeah. And even it is, even if it doesn't work, you're still learning along the way. So you're advancing by knowing, hey, this doesn't work. We gotta go a different direction. So it's like everything, you know, I think sometimes we get in this mindset of everything's got to succeed, but it doesn't. We're still learning every day, you know, when we're doing it.

Yeah. Even if it doesn't succeed, it doesn't mean it's a failure. You can always learn from it and keep moving forward.

Cool. Well, I know you said I don't know how deep, you know, if you can give us the. Give us some more details on what you got coming. As far as trailers. You said you got some coming, but are you willing to. Are you willing to tell us what they're about or what kind of technologies? You mentioned a little bit about doing more with the existing infrastructure. I've heard intensification. Is that what you're talking? Yeah. You got any projects? Yeah. As much as you want to tell us. Let the listeners know what we got coming down the pipe.

Yeah. So right now we have a great pilot going on with crew carbon. So they add calcium carbonate to increase the alkalinity, which is something we need from a process standpoint anyway. Currently we spend around a Quarter million dollars a year in sodium hydroxide for the same purpose. So this replaces that. So we're offsetting about a quarter million a year in operating expenses. And they're actually adding more alkalinity than we may need strictly for process. And using carbonate chemistry, they're actually able to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. So we're able to see a cost reduction. There's some carbon credits that can be generated from that that have some value to them. And we're helping to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. So win, win, win. So we have that one up and running right now.

It's not just water now we're helping greenhouse gases.

That's right. Beyond just the waterways. Always thinking about the air, the land, how we can approach this from a one environment perspective. So we have that one going right now. I mentioned next Wednesday. Colorado School of Mines has their direct potable reuse, their dpr.

Oh yeah, we've done an episode with the professor, Zahi, Kathy. Yeah, that was a good episode.

So a couple months ago I got a call from Zahi and he was saying he needed somewhere for the trailer. And what really stuck out to me about that was he said, I love coming to your facility. I know I can be there hooked up and producing water in two hours. And that's what we built this park liquid site for. So I always, always love to hear that. Falling on the heels of that one, we're going to have. World Waterworks has their AAA process that is coming out and that one is going to help us kind of intensify our primary clarifiers for better carbon and nutrient diversion into our solid stream. We can treat some of that a little more efficiently, boost our biogas production. So we're excited to see how that one works.

And that one's like cutting edge, right?

AAA like, yeah, this will be the first one in the United States. Wow. So they have a. They're, they're doing this now at a plant in Europe, but this will be the first one. So we're working with World Waterworks to build that trailer and then get it out to site to do this test. So very excited for that.

Yeah, that's a good one.

And then talking about intensification, our salts, contact tanks or aeration basins, we see the need to have some intensification in there to help us defer expanding the number of basins we have for future densification needs.

If you can just take a, you know, back up a little bit and tell the viewers or the listeners, give them a little what intensification means or what, what we mean when you say intensification.

Yeah, so doing more within our existing footprint. So you know, we can always expand our capacity by just building more tanks, more diffusers, more blowers and give us that. But there's been a lot of advancements over the last decades really in the space, but I'd say especially over the last five, 10 years and finding some ways to really increase the treatment, the level of treatment we get within a given footprint. So an example of that is like a ifast and integrated fixed film activated sludge process where you can put in some kind of. Historically they've been little plastic wagon wheels, they look like pasta and they help you grow biomass on them to provide more treatment within the same footprint. Some other things that we've looked at are membrane aerated bioreactors. So that's one where we are working on getting a contract with Fluence to have their MABR technology out. They have a pilot trailer to see how that might work. They've got a little different take on it than some of the other technology providers out there. Just the way it's to be going, configured. But that has the potential to increase our capacity by you know, 30 plus percent potentially, which would allow us to avoid building additional tanks and still get the same level of treatment.

Yeah, that's just like. Yeah, that's great. You can get 30% more out of this without building anything. That's awesome.

We're also talking to Veolia about they have a new media for an mbbr looking at their Sella media and this one's pretty new for them as well. So they were looking for somewhere to test this out. So we've been working with them to get them out this summer to take a look and run a pilot for about six months to work with us on seeing how that might fit into our process. So those are some examples. Our trailer we're building out to be very modular so we can test a number of different processes, process configurations. But our first take at this is going to be looking at how we can do pdna, which is partial denitrification anamox. And so that's a process that we believe we can convert our existing denitrification filters to. We'll need to do some better process control in our secondary process. So as we're doing our MABR and these Cella pilots, we're looking to make sure we can get stable process control to feed this future process down the road.

So many acronyms, it's like an Acronym.

I know, I know. Yeah. Health of that soup for sure. But that should help us drastically reduce the amount of methanol we need to use, which again, just allows us to get higher levels of treatment at lower chemical cost, which is also lower kind of externalities for some of those other environmental impacts.

Yeah, Just more sustainable.

Yeah. Fewer trucks means fewer emissions and everything along the way. Yeah.

Cool. Well, it sounds like you're. Well, not just you, but a lot of people are going to be busy checking out a lot of the latest technologies.

Yeah, I know. My team's excited to be working on these and we're always open, so if anyone wants to come by and get a tour. And I'm sure I'll be back on here to give an update here later this summer.

Great. Yeah. Well, final question and then we'll move into the end of show quiz with you. But final question. What's the coolest thing you found in your opinion about leading park? What's the. What's the coolest thing about it?

So I'm a process nerd, so I love learning about all these new processes. My last, especially five, 10 years in the industry has been doing too much project management, not enough engineering. So it's nice being able to roll up my sleeves and be able to.

You're like a kid in a candy store.

I love it. I'm way too excited about some of these. My staff laughs at me sometimes, but what I think has been. So I love that part personally, but also just seeing how much excitement we get from across the board on our staff. We've been talking to our facilities and process maintenance group. They're stoked to be building out this pilot trailer that we're doing. My engineering team is really excited about getting all of these projects working and working with technology providers and everybody on these pilot tests over the thing, working with the lab and talking to them about what. What we're looking at, why we're looking at this different process control. Our operators are excited to look at this. So just seeing how much energy that park program and the research and innovation really brings into what we do every day has been really exciting.

Yeah. That building your own trailer. I like that. Or our own trailer. I mean, then you can kind of design, you know, design it as you need or bring in modules as you need. We need to simulate the park primary clarifier. You can do that. And that'll be. That'll open up a lot of doors as far as what we look at or things we can test for.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Cool. Well, thanks for coming by. Thanks for giving us the down low and yeah, I hope to have you back on future episodes and check in every once in a while, see how things are going with these projects and. And other projects that we got going.

Absolutely.

Cool. Are you ready for the end of show quiz?

We'll find out.

All right, we'll see. It's a four question. Four question. You get to pick your. You get a pick here. So I'll give you a choice. Famous founders, what are they? Or Mr. Which one of those categories would you like?

Let's try what are they?

What are they? Okay, good choice. There are four questions. We'll see if you can nail them all. Okay. What are they? Mickey D's.

McDonald's.

Yep. Nickname for McDonald's. Butterball Turkey. Brand name turkey. You are correct. Snoss edges.

Dog treats.

Dog snacks. You are correct. Okay, we get this one. You have swept them all. Nick L. Nip. Nick Nickelnip.

All right, you stumped me on that.

Nik. Capital L, Cash Dash Nip.

I've never heard of that one.

No, no, it's candy drink in wax bottles. Oh, have you seen. I didn't know that's what they're called either.

I didn't know they had a name.

I didn't either. I've had those, but I guess they're called Nick Ol Nip. All right, well, I don't know what that means, but learn something every day. You got 75% on it because that's pretty darn good. All right. Yeah, yeah. Thanks again for being here. Really appreciate it. And to our viewers and listeners, thank you for listening to the podcast. And if you like the show, tell a friend, tell a fellow engineer, tell a lab person, tell whoever you know, and we'll build some viewership that way. And if you have ideas for the show, let me know and we will explore those topics. It sounds like we got tons of topics to make episodes with in the future coming. Coming up, so that's good. And thanks for being here on the Innovation Flow podcast.

Thank you. Thanks, Blair.

Thank.