Brad Hollerbach is the Director of Information Technology for the Southeast Missourian. His opinions are his own and do not reflect those of the newspaper or its editorial board. He writes this blog primarily for his own amusement and to parody the absurdities of the world we live in. He lives with his wife and two cats that don't really care for one another in Cape.

Big Brother Is Watching Your Waste

Posted Friday, January 8, 2010, at 12:00 AM

The two small legal notices that appeared in the December 30 issue of the Southeast Missourian were unusual.

They were regarding Southeast Missouri Hospital and the downtown business Ervin's Metalsmiths. The notice for the hospital said:

It has been noticed that Southeast Missouri Hospital, located at 1701 Lacy, Cape Girardeau, Missouri 63701, was in significant noncompliance with their Industrial Pretreatment Permit. The noncompliance consists of exceeding, on one occasion, daily and monthly permit limits for total oil and grease average limits between the dates of January 1, 2009 and June 30, 2009. The source is believed to be from the cooking operation of the kitchen. Southeast Missouri Hospital has returned to total compliance.

The notice for Ervin's Metalsmiths was similar except that that business exceeded the total amount of cyanide it may legally dump down the drain between July 1 and December 31, 2009. Its notice also did not indicate if the business was yet in total compliance.

Besides the rather creepy fact that cyanide of any amount may legally be poured down the drain, these legal notices made me realize two things:

First of all, Big Brother is watching your wastewater.

In this case, I'm guessing that Big Brother is the EPA although no specific government agency was credited for placing this ad. What agency exactly noticed the extra grease and cyanide is a bit of a mystery. However, for the sake of this blog, we will assume it was the EPA.

The second thing these legal notices made me realize is that whosever responsible for noticing things like too much grease or cyanide going into the sewer system has one very, very suckie job.

I'd like to know who aspires to be a wastewater testing collection agent? Is that an entry-level job for getting your foot in the door for collecting the much more exciting sewer solids?

I have visions of Junior Field Agent Bob of the EPA being assigned the important field agent task of descending into our city sewers in his three-piece suit where he is supposed to hold a mason jar beneath the drain pipe exiting either of these businesses until it contains a sample that the EPA labs can analyze for things like too much grease or too much cyanide.

Considering that the legal notice indicated that these businesses exceeded the amount of grease and cyanide which they could legally dump down the drain over a period of 6 months, I suppose Junior Field Agent Bob had to clamor down into our city's sewers every day for the last year to fill up his mason jar. That's definitely what I would consider a suckie job.

Or perhaps collecting the questionable effluence in a mason jar is the old way of monitoring business's wastewater. Maybe the EPA now uses a high-tech collection device that is mounted to a business's sewer drain and monitors the discharge in real-time rather than sending people like Junior Field Agent Bob down a manhole on a daily basis.

And when the high-tech monitoring device discovers a violation like too much grease or too much cyanide, it triggers a nearby manhole cover to pop out of the street like one of those pop-up turkey timers signaling the EPA that a violation is close at hand.

For Junior Field Agent Bob's sake, I hope that is how the EPA now monitors these wicked wastewater wrongdoers.

Grease and cyanide can be murder on ties and wingtips.

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Whatever, Brad....it could be someone resembling 'Erin Brockovich' getting those samples. Ya never know. ;o)~

btw, I am not familiar with Ervin's Metalsmiths; Why are they disposing cyanide?

-- Posted by Turnip on Fri, Jan 8, 2010, at 8:57 AM
"The source is believed to be from the cooking operation of the kitchen. Southeast Missouri Hospital has returned to total compliance."

So does that mean the hospital kitchen is now serving the food greasy again or did they simply find another means of disposal?

-- Posted by Cutlass1964 on Fri, Jan 8, 2010, at 9:04 AM
And then there is the chicken droppings inspector. And will all know what we call that job, don't we?

-- Posted by voyager on Fri, Jan 8, 2010, at 9:16 AM
Cyanide is used in electroplating which you would expect a metalsmith to do, Turnip. It's also used in the mining of gold and silver, but I'm pretty sure there's not much of that going on in downtown Cape.

Good question, Cutlass1964. Most restaurants have separate external grease collection bins out by their dumpsters. Perhaps, Southeast didn't have one, or more likely, some procedure wasn't being followed. It's a lot easier to pour a pan full of grease down the drain rather than walking it out to the special dumpster.

By the way, Voyager, the last time I checked chickens were against zoning in the city of Cape, so we don't have to worry about any of those wayward dropping. Now goose guano is another matter.

OK, Me'Lange, while a Haz-Mat suit is how it would be in the real world, I like the vision of Bob heading to his "office" in the sewers of Cape in a suit and tie.

Thanks for reading.

-- Posted by Brad_Hollerbach on Fri, Jan 8, 2010, at 9:42 AM
Good suggestion and good question, Me'Lange. I've forwarded it to our editor.

TFR

-- Posted by Brad_Hollerbach on Fri, Jan 8, 2010, at 9:57 AM
Waste permits are funky things. When we moved into a new bureau in Dade County, FL, I drew up a tiny room that would be used as a darkroom maybe once a week when a photographer found it easier to make deadline from there than driving 60 miles back to West Palm Beach.

The darkroom was a simple room with a sink and a counter.

You'd have thought I was going to pollute the planet. They had 43 different kinds of forms to fill out just to get the approval to BUILD the room and then I'd have to have periodic testing done.

I changed the label on the drawing from Darkroom to Break Room and the approval sailed through.

-- Posted by ksteinhoff on Fri, Jan 8, 2010, at 4:07 PM
I love it! It's all in the way you ask. Of course, darkrooms are such a moot point these days with everything being digital.

Our photography darkroom has been retrofitted into our server room and our two big production darkrooms that once house large stationary cameras have actually been turned into break rooms, after a bit of remodeling, of course.

TFR

-- Posted by Brad_Hollerbach on Fri, Jan 8, 2010, at 4:27 PM
Sometimes the solution to pollution IS dilution.

The Orlando Sentinel was permitted to have X percentage of silver in their waste discharge (a byproduct of making photographic negatives in the composing process, mostly).

Some suit got the idea that they could save on the water bill by putting some kind of funky chemical in the urinals so that the waste product (putting it politely) would pass through the chemical and down the drain without needing water.

The result was that the paper used less water, which raised the proportion of silver to water and exposed them to fines higher than the water savings. Same amount of silver, just less water.

-- Posted by ksteinhoff on Fri, Jan 8, 2010, at 7:36 PM
Junior Field Agent Bob action photo found -

http://www.micom.net/oops/WomenLiveLonger5.jpg

-- Posted by fxpwt on Sun, Jan 10, 2010, at 12:14 PM

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