In the case of WRS Environmental Services, the vision CEO Michael Rodgers had for his business required that he and his partner, WRS president Thomas Arabia, revise the direction in which they were headed and institute major changes. That strategy is still paying dividends as the eighteen-year-old company successfully weathers the economic downturn and heads into its future with a strong tailwind.

“About seven years ago, we started a ground-up re-creation of the company,” Rodgers explains. Because they believed their employees were key to everything they wanted to accomplish, WRS made a commitment to unionize the company.

“We’re the only environmental company in the region that has a unionized work force—unionized because we wanted a vehicle to attract the best.” WRS’s wages and benefits packages continue to be an enticement that provides the company with a huge block of talent from which to choose.

Ralph Ranghelli, Executive Vice President, adds, “Development of your workforce is key. The extensive training we provide is one of the factors that I think distinguishes us. We have a talented workforce that has been with us a long time, and we’re competing in a market that is 99.9 percent non-union.”

Visionary Leader
WRS Environmental Services was formed in 1992, as Waste Recycling Solutions; but when the limitations of the term “waste” got in the way of how the company saw itself, the name was changed to incorporate its new image of its future. Today the ninety-person-strong company has its headquarters on Long Island in Yaphank, New York, and comprehensive satellite offices in Brooklyn and outside of Utica, New York, in Poland. It provides a broad range of specialized and customized services—from 24/7 land and marine environmental emergency response, hazardous remediation and training and security, to water treatment and de-watering systems management and maintenance, vacuum excavation, pumping and vacuuming, and transport and disposal. It has strategic partnerships with all the utilities in the Northeast region: Consolidated Edison, National Grid, and New York Power Authority.

Ranghelli doesn’t hesitate to boast of Rodgers’s capabilities as CEO in charge of all daily operations. “Mike is sort of a visionary—he can look at opportunities and portray in his mind a strategic plan that can be executed to keep us in the forefront of the industry. Without that, this company would not have grown and expanded as it did.”

Challenges that Distinguish WRS
“One of the first challenges was changing the company, and it goes on today,” says Rodgers. “The second one was building strategic partnerships with the utilities in the region. The third was attracting employees, giving them a lot of power in the hiring and training, and not being afraid to look for perfection. And then we stepped it up to the equipment. We definitely have the best equipment in the industry.”

When Rodgers began to see what his own limitations were, he went looking for people who could advise him. “And that’s where Ralph came in.” Ranghelli’s extensive background is in the utility business and has included several years’ direct involvement in union relationships. WRS’s CFO, Anthony Nozzolillo, held a position overseeing thousands of employees at another utility company.

“We believe that people are the way to get to the right people,” says Rodgers.

And the Difference Is…
“Another thing that distinguishes us,” Ranghelli says, “is that we can improvise—we can customize—any of our services. We often find ourselves confronted with situations beyond the norm. We have the nimbleness and agility to tailor operations to meet their requirements.”

However, the extremely high level of service and capabilities that WRS offers its clients doesn’t come cheap.

“Because of the direction we chose, we took an environmental company and made it one of the more expensive companies out there for utility companies to use,” Rodgers acknowledges. “The only way we could overcome that was to give quality of service. We’re the furthest thing from the cheapest, but when everyone is cutting costs, we still have the ability to grow because of the services we give. ‘Value added.’ Everyone in the company knows that term.”

WRS responds to more than 1,200 emergencies a year including environmental spills, vehicles hitting utility poles, hazmat incidents, and more. The company guarantees a response in two hours or less, which it handles using a finely tuned, multi-stage process that operates 24/7. From the customer, the report goes directly to the supervisory group, where they are intimately familiar with the steps to develop the response plan. The on-call duty supervisor dispatches the appropriate teams, which might include hazmat technicians and highly trained specialized equipment operators.

“It’s never dull,” Rodgers happily concedes. “There’s always excitement. And every single day there’s a new challenge, with opportunities out there to strategically plan where the company is going to go.”

Looking Ahead
“We’ve had to look very closely at our internal expenses to bring them down as low as possible,” says Rodgers about the changing economic landscape. “Anyone who is willing to make the commitment we’ve made, they will be fine. The weaker companies will have a more difficult time of it. We’ll have to restructure a little bit.

“The part of our business where we support the general contractors who work with the utilities has slowed because utilities have postponed some capital expenditures. However, that’s temporary. They can’t put off those projects indefinitely.”

WRS’s future appears to be pretty green in other ways, too.

“We’re looking into ‘green’ technology, which is really the buzz word in the industry. Utilities will be the driver, and we see ourselves as supporting them in that. Through our union affiliations, we’re putting people through specialized training on such things as solar panels.”

WRS uses fourteen very quiet vacuum trucks—each one a $300 thousand to $425 thousand investment, and each with slightly different capabilities—that meet acceptable noise pollution standards set by the New York Power Authority. The trucks also conform to diesel regulations for emissions.

Rodgers recognizes the need. “It’s hard to be in an environmental corporation and have a vehicle that’s polluting…right?”

To learn more about WRS Environmental Services, visit www.WRSES.com.

Story by Anne Biggs

Why Texas? “At the time, Abilene had the worst service record of the three portable restroom companies operating [in the region],” explains Paulsen. All three are either out of business—or Paulsen bought them out. “Plus, I got tired of shoveling snow.”

That was thirty years ago. Today, Paulsen’s Can Doo Budjet Rentals—yes, that’s a “J” for “jet”—owns operations based in Abilene and, since the mid-90s, in San Angelo, with a staff of fifteen, including office personnel and management, and ten different vacuum trucks. The company specializes in portable shower and restroom trailers with air conditioning—and the exceptional service that is “Can Doo Lou’s” secret to his success. “The whole thing is [about] service.”

Satisfaction equals…satisfaction
“I get the most satisfaction from my work when I have the right number of units at the right location[s],  so nobody’s put in a bind,” he says. In fact, he’s turned down jobs where he and his customer have disagreed significantly on how many units the event requires in order to meet the needs of the expected crowd. “I believed they were going to have more people than they’d asked units for. A year later, they’ve come back and said I was right. It’s doing the job right.”

Paulsen has agreed to set up the lesser number the customer has ordered—but has held extras on the truck. And, more than once, he’s gotten the call to set up the rest. “The biggest thing is communication with the people who are running the event, teaching the committee what has to be done right. It’s sometimes hard to get people to recognize how many units they need, but that’s a place you can’t cut costs. You have to provide the right sanitation, or you’re going to lose your crowd.”

Paulsen is an enthusiastic member of the Board of Portable Sanitation International, which offers an annual convention and continuing education workshops and seminars—“everything from legislation to public relations.” PSI’s certification program teaches operators the right way to service and clean units, and all of Paulsen’s operators who have been with him long enough to qualify for certification have gone through the program.

“The industry has gotten a black eye for units that aren’t serviced right. They should never smell at all.” Besides relying on PSI’s criteria, he has his own standards as well. “You have to do what you say you’re going to do. You have to keep a promise. When I started out, I told my first employee to keep on scrubbing until it was clean enough for his mother, his daughter, or his sweetheart.”

Industry changes and issues
Paulsen explains that “the biggest problem with the industry is getting operators to join the association so they can learn more about the type of product they put out and the right way to do things.”

Besides that, he sees that “governmental agencies attach more service charges and fees,” including those for the disposal of domestic waste. “Some are free, some charge you an arm and a leg. And the customer has a hard time understanding this cost.” Paulsen’s staff attends business expos and home and garden shows, uses television and radio commercials and sends out flyers to people who apply for building permits in an effort to keep customers and the public informed about the industry.

To help combat the potential losses of the economic downturn, Can Doo has added benefits to its rental packages, such as hand-sanitizers in all units—which it instituted before the “so-called downturn”—and baby-changing and hand-washing stations as well as single- or double-unit showers, “so the event can actually get and keep more people on site by providing other amenities.”

Advancements in the industry that Paulsen appreciates include construction that makes units easier to service and transport, mirrors on the doors, coat hooks, and solar-powered lighting for night events.

Texas is big business
Can Doo’s region extends 150 miles north and south of Abilene and about 100 miles east and west. One of Can Doo’s biggest projects has been its rentals during the construction of 5,000 wind turbines, the largest such installation in the country.

Additionally, May through September is prime time for special events—cook-offs, festivals, air shows. Can Doo is on site when San Angelo hosts a drag-boat race that appears on CNN. Its units are on the ground for May’s Polo on the Prairies, a fundraiser for The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which hosts more than a thousand people on a ranch for two days of polo, entertainment, food, music, and more. The event has raised over $4 million for cancer research in its twenty-three-year history.

And then there’s the Chili Super Bowl in Buffalo Gap on Labor Day Weekend—with the world’s largest chili pot—the twenty-seven-year-old fundraiser for the Ben Richey Boys Ranch. It’s Lou Paulsen’s goal to judge this event someday. “It’s a real job, being a judge—takes about a six-pack of beer. Five hundred gallons of Texas recipe, all meat, no beans. I think some of them use road kill.”

For more information about Can Doo Budjet Rentals, call 800.638.1795 or visit the website at www.candooportablerestrooms.com.

Story by Anne Biggs

It seems the only thing the folks at Russell Reid don’t plan for is good fortune. They study every aspect of the waste management industry, meet annually for a management retreat to strategize for the year ahead, carry out an acquisitions program, reinvest in the company according to long-term goals for managed growth, and carefully tweak operations and marketing to fit their business model.  As a result, the 67-year-old company enjoys a significant amount of—you guessed it—good fortune.

Maybe the lesson here is that good luck comes to those who work their tails off and leave nothing to fate.

“We are the third owners of the company, started in 1943, by the original Russell Reid,” says Gary Weiner, President and Chief Operating Officer for Russell Reid. When his father, entrepreneur Morton Weiner, acquired the company in 1981, “we were operating exclusively as a portable toilet rental company and figured it would be a good fit.”

Morton and his brother David had started Mr. John portable toilet rentals [www.MrJohn.com] in 1964. Their first unit was built of plywood, the holding tank a 55-gallon drum with a hole cut in its side. From that humble and sort of scary beginning, a company was born that now has seven locations and nearly 250 employees.

Finessing the fit
Both companies were based in central New Jersey, and, like Mr. John, “Russell Reid was a service-based company,” explains Gary. “It came with two 3,000-gallon vacuum trucks and two metal boxes of index cards that represented customer accounts. It also came with a tremendous amount of goodwill. We opted to hang onto the [Russell Reid] name and branded it. Later, we adopted and trademarked a slogan, ‘Responsible Wastewater Management™,’ because we wanted to tell our customers that they’d be in good hands. Our book of business began to grow.”

Around this time, “Another dynamic was occurring in New Jersey. New regulations virtually outlawed the disposal of septic waste on farmers’ fields or in landfills. That opened the door to a number of smaller companies wanting to exit the business.”

Over the years, Russell Reid has acquired many similar smaller scale companies that were good fits and that allowed the growing company to expand the range of services it could offer to customers.

Gary explains: “The same trucks and workers could operate in other markets, from residential to commercial and industrial work.” That includes—but isn’t limited to—pumping leachate at landfills and grease for restaurants, cleaning out a drain at someone’s home or inspecting municipal sewer lines.

Gary rattles off “tanks, pits, pumps, sewers, sanitary, and storm”—the quick list of what Russell Reid does. “We have a number of combination sewer jet vacs that are more expensive and complicated. We got into that carefully.”

He anticipates that as the infrastructure in the Northeast ages, Russell Reid may expand its services to include relining and rehabilitating sewer conduits.

Centralized for “economies of scale”
Russell Reid is a full-service waste management company providing collection, transportation, and disposal of solid and liquid waste to all of New Jersey, metropolitan New York and Long Island, Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania, and northern Delaware. 

Russell Reid and Mr. John share around 100 management and support personnel, and their 150 field service employees are co-branded and cross-trained. Of the companies’ seven locations, five are fully staffed service centers with a service manager, operational support staff, equipment maintenance personnel, and field service techs. Dispatchers and customer service personnel staff a central logistics department that pushes all work out to the service centers electronically, while financials and sales and marketing are also centralized.

“All customer relations, logistics, billing are done from a central location. We process [the work] here [and] push it out to the branches, where it is executed. Then it flows back for updating, processing, and billing,” says Gary.

Doing the right thing
Having grown up in the business, Gary likes “the change, the innovation, the challenge, being a leader.”

“I like the enthusiasm and excitement that industry professionals derive out of an industry that is often seen as mundane, obscure, and irrelevant.”

At the same time, he is realistic about the effort required to be successful. “The margins are very, very thin; the marketplace is unbelievably competitive; and there really are no trade secrets. It’s very challenging to create and build a sustainable model that allows the business to reinvest in itself. It’s not, by any means, easy. We made a commitment early on to be Best in Class, [and] we’ve been investing and re-investing from an early stage.”

He continues to be devoted to “making a not-very-sexy industry memorable. Our brand has excellent name recognition in the state of New Jersey. We have very high moral standards, a high level of integrity, and are environmentally responsible. We do the right thing. And if we don’t, we make it right.”

Find out more about Russell Reid at www.RussellReid.com  or 800.356.4468.

#####

Sidebar
An industry of ideas
American Liquid Waste: What’s the most significant advancement you’ve seen in the industry?
Gary Weiner: Solar light in the toilet…Actually, when we were at the pumper show [Pumper & Cleaner Expo, February 2010, in Louisville, KY], I saw a completely robotic video-inspection ’droid camera, self-propelled and wireless/cableless. I think it was mapping the sewer system. It could process everything it saw as well.

My brother Mitchell said [of the pumper show], “it’s a place of ideas.” That’s where you can really see the creativity and innovation to address the needs of this industry. It’s really come a long way.

#####

Story by Anne Biggs

There are at least two things the close-knit Hugill family of Mahaffey, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, share: their commitment to their customers and a similar commitment and devotion to the missionary work that builds churches and schools and brings medical care, food and other assistance to poor communities around the globe.

In fact, the family businesses and the family’s church and mission work are interwoven. Talk to Tony Hugill, who owns TH Port-A-Johns, about his company, and inevitably his experiences in the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Japan—and, most recently, Haiti—find a place in the conversation.

Tony shares, “I was off on my third mission in Haiti when my dad, Ed, and brother, Matt, set up the first port-a-john” for his new company. That was in 2007. In the few short years since then, TH Port-A-Johns has grown from fifteen units to 300 or more, with restroom trailers, hand-washing stations and sanitizer stands. TH provides mobile personal sanitation equipment for projects within a 100-mile radius of Mahaffey, in central Pennsylvania.

“I want to be able to supply the services that my customers need and take care of you the best I can,” Tony explains, “so I won’t go any farther [than that radius].”

The family’s work and service ethic
Tony worked for years for Hugill Sanitation, the trash company that was established by his grandfather some six decades back and is now owned by his father and his uncle, Bill. Matt Hugill’s trucking company hauls coal.

“We’re all little entrepreneurs,” Tony says. “But we’re all involved in the mission work, too.”

Not surprising, when you learn that Tony and Matt’s grandfather was pastor at Calvary Chapel Church and Campgrounds for the Mount Calvary Evangelistic Association in Mahaffey. For his mission efforts in Haiti, Tony connected with a pastor he knows in New York and with Miller’s Evangelistic Association in Smethport, Pennsylvania.

Tony explains his continuing commitment to his missionary work: “The hardest time I ever had was when I started this business on my own. The fuel prices went really high, but my dad and granddad helped me. I got to the point where I was really putting my heart into my business, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But once I got involved in the mission work, [my business] just took off—my dad’s and mine; it’s doubled in the last few years.
“I’ve been fortunate. We had a big boom in our area with the gas drilling, and now I’m busier in the winter than the summer.”

But what about Haiti?
“In any ordinary trip, when we go down, we might have a Haitian building crew building schools, or send the preachers to a school in the Dominican Republic to learn to teach the children. We have funds and a budget, and we buy seed, megaphones for churches, musical instruments. And, we reach out to the Haitians and help them reach out to each other so they don’t rely on us [exclusively]. We build maybe six or seven houses and one or two churches a year.”

But when the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck on January 12—its epicenter just ten miles west of Port-au-Prince with its two million inhabitants—no “ordinary” measures would suffice to grapple with the catastrophe to this unbelievably impoverished nation.

“After the quake, our church in Port-au-Prince actually stood,” Tony says. “We hired a doctor and ran a free hospital out of our church. We feed up to sixty a day with our budget, and we’re trying to open an orphanage now. We build outhouses—it doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but they don’t have any sanitary facilities; [they didn’t] even before the earthquake.

“If I had the money, I would [bring] port-a-johns to Haiti—I wouldn’t make anything, just give back. I’ve been to the Dominican Republic, Philippines and Japan, but there’s nothing like Haiti. This is why I started my business. My heart goes out to those people.”

Tony’s ready to go back, where he and others like him are sorely needed, to provide succor and hope. He recalls a scene amid the tent cities of homeless survivors: knots of survivors and relief workers gathered for church services. And he knows that’s where he’s meant to be.

TH Port-A-Johns is at 358 Front Street, Mahaffey, PA 15757. Phone: 814.592.8719.

Story by Anne Biggs

In the last decade, Louis Galasso III, son of the founder, has taken over most of the operations, making himself available to his employees as well as to clients and suppliers. Putting his heart into the business, Galasso stays on top of trends and researches opportunities so he can continue to grow Allstate by branching into other segments of the industrial and environmental clean-up industry.

And he’s frequently on the scene, being seen.

“The hands-on makes a big difference,” says Donna Miller, Allstate’s compliance officer, of her boss. “He’s involved, and he knows what’s going on. I think that’s one of the reasons we do well.”

Mike Dello, CFO and general manager of the sewer services division, credits Galasso’s “open-door, hands-on policy” with the company’s recent growth and ability to stay at the forefront of the industry.

“He’s a teacher and a communicator, taking the time to show you what has to be done.” Pointing out that Galasso grew up in the business, he adds, “I’ve never known anyone with as much knowledge as he has.”

From Dello, that’s a significant statement. He himself came to Allstate eight years ago as a CPA with strong field experience in the sewer and construction business as well as a stint as CFO of another corporation. Hired to come on board and eventually replace Allstate’s retiring CFO, Dello was soon tapped to put his considerable expertise to work in growing and overseeing the sewer services division. He’s handled both posts since 2008.

Allstate’s tagline is We’re helping corporate America clean-up the environment, and it offers the public and private sectors a range of services:
Emergency Response Service

• Waste Services
• Tank Services
• Marine Services
• Construction Services
• Sewer Services
• Water Blasting Services
• Industrial Maintenance
• Centrifuge Oil Processing

“We’ve developed a lot of niches and nuances in how to clean refineries and utilities,” says Dello.

“We can clean a mean tank,” jokes Miller, although she notes that “industrial services is the bulk of our company’s business. Each branch location seems to have its own specialty.”

For example, New Jersey and Pennsylvania oil refineries make use of centrifuge oil processing; New York City, with its utilities and infrastructure, has greater use for sewer services and waste material management.

Allstate is known for its expertise with sewer line rehabilitation, in particular with cured-in-place piping, or CIPP. In this trenchless process, Allstate’s highly skilled personnel re-line a sewer pipe via the manhole accesses, rather than the far more costly, time-consuming and inconvenient procedure of digging up the street to replace a faulty storm or sanitary sewer pipeline. Cured-in-place calls for a resin-impregnated felt “sock” to be slid into the existing pipe after is has been cleaned and examined via video imaging. Once the sock is filled with water to expand it to the old pipe’s dimensions, the water is heated to cure the resin to a hard shell casing. After the water cools and drains, the new liner is opened at both ends. The process takes a few hours, and hundreds of feet of pipe can be relined in this manner in just a few days for a significant cost savings and much less aggravation.

All of the company’s field personnel are 40-hour OSHA trained and undergo continuous training in new safety procedures. Allstate fully complies with all applicable local, state and federal standards; at Galasso’s insistence, safety is the company’s highest priority.

Responsible management of an expertly trained professional staff and technologically advanced equipment translates into the right person for the task and the right tool for the job. With its sophisticated QA/QC system in place, Allstate delivers fully integrated services for a single-source advantage that lowers costs and reduces downtime.

“A big part of our service is emergency response,” says Dello. “We have what we need, and we do it all.”

Story by Anne Biggs

The challenge, which has been emerging over the past few years, is that waste haulers face a hodgepodge of regulations from state governments, cities and counties. No national standard exists for dealing with septic sludge or grease solids. The sludge is a product of dewatering systems. The fats, oils or grease (F.O.G.) comes from degreasing processing.

Some background may be in order: Degreasing and dewatering is the process by which liquid from grease traps or septic system is removed through filtration, evaporation or another separation process. The leftovers, or solid material, can then be disposed of in a landfill, further treated to become high grade compost, or subsequently treated and – in the case of F.O.G. – is transformed into a source of fuel.

In some states, such as Texas, grease trap waste is considered a hazardous waste because regulators argue that the solids can contain toxic and/or caustic materials that are used to clean grease drains and other grease handling equipment.

The so-called Class 5 permits, explained Russ Caughman of Flo Trend Systems, are expensive to secure because they require engineering studies and related costs.

In addition, many areas require public notification for grease trap processing because of odor problems. Subsequent public pressure and aesthetic concerns limit the locations to remote areas or places far from homes or retail businesses.

“People don’t want grease trap processes in their neighborhood because it stinks,” Caughman said. Caughman is vice president of Flo Trend Systems, a Houston, Texas company involved in the filtration and solids/liquid business.

More and more, municipal waste water systems are limiting or refusing to take grease or some types of sludge from waste haulers. To keep costs down while still serving customers, waste haulers are getting creative about processing septic and grease trap waste. They are exploring on-site systems, composting and other sources for disposal. Bio fuels – creating usable fuel from grease, for example, is also gaining steam. Regulators have had mixes success keeping up with the technology, with a crazy-quilt array of laws that can be vexing for waste haulers and equipment manufacturers who serve the waste industry.

“We have the simplest thing out there for dewatering sludge,” Caughman explained. “We have dewatering equipment that can separate solids from liquids that can then go down a sewer. The solids go to a landfill, which is the simplest way, or it can be composted by mixing it with (septic) waste or agriculture waste and adding lime or other components.”

“We didn’t have hardly any composting when we first started building (these systems). Regulations have driven some of the demand for the dewatering. Grease trap waste traditionally was hauled by trucks picking it up at restaurants and hospitals and dumping it at waste water treatment plants,” he said. “But waste water treatment plants cant’ take too much and (they) are under duress because of the increasing populations.”

Too much grease or oil in any septic operation can upset the delicate balance of “bugs” that treat the waste. “The first thing these plants do is cut off these waste haulers, not just grease traps haulers but septage haulers, too. That is what has caused the waste haulers to figure out “How can I process this myself?” And that is when they run up against regulations,” he said.

Leon Holt is a private consultant, based in North Carolina, with an extensive background in FOG and sanitary sewer collection.

The dewatered FOG (plus) solids is a great compost material. If dewatered enough, it has sufficient BTU value to be used as a fuel augmentation source for power plants (and) brick making,” he said. In addition, if it meets environmental regulations, the material can go to a landfill, he said.

North Carolina is one of a handful of states that is actively trying to make it easier for entrepreneurs to process grease trap and sewage sludge. Examples of those currently in use are facilities near Charlotte, Greensboro and Winston Salem, Caughman said.

The challenge for would-be processors is negotiating through the maze-like regulations, often astronomically expensive engineering, and related and costly studies that the laws require.

“There are people who are doing it and they have to figure out through the local and state regulatory people to see how they can do it legally,” he said. With permitting, “There is no national standard. In some areas, it is even the state, it is the city or it is the county that makes the regulations.”

One company that has had success with re-using waste is Aqua-Zyme Disposal of Van Vleck, Texas. The company sells ready-to-install systems that dewater waste. The company operates a plant – open to the public – that shows its equipment in action, recycling septic sludge and grease trap water, turning it into a high-grade, odorless compost.

At Aqua-Zyme, the dewatered septic and grease trap waste is mixed with wood chips, put in windrows and slowly turned and lightly watered. It decays over several weeks, becoming “hot” and is then screened and sold to landscapers and others who want organic fertilizer.

John DeRham is the founder of Atlantic Dewatering Services of Clayton, North Carolina. The company sells equipment for all sorts of dewatering projects, from trucks and spreaders to disperse sludge on fields to boxes for the dewatering process. The company also provides help with siting, permitting and reporting regulations.

“There have been a number of installed systems,” DeRham said. “Some of our sales were interrupted by the slowing economy. There seem to be some (issues) because the regulatory environment still causes uncertainty. There still does not appear to be regulatory consistency.”

Despite the challenges, “We have seen interest in the grease trap side with the grease haulers to broaden out. They like the flexibility that the containerized systems offer and also there are a number of places where there are existing anaerobic digesters that are being consolidated for fats, oil and greases,” he said. “That’s the trend, the increasing diversion of F.O.G. into existing or planned anaerobic digester systems.”

DeRham continued, “They are starting to recover the BTU value intrinsic in F.O.G. There is a value to that material and it has found a beneficial use.

Proper management of grease trap waste, whether for its biofuel potential or another use, has tremendous economic value, DeRham said.

“Proper grease trap management provides a huge savings. There is a direct correlation between proper grease trap maintenance and (if it is) redirected into a storm sewer overflow. So, there’s been a lot more interest in keeping grease out of utility lines on the municipal and city sides.” The reason is obvious: grease in public utility pipes and lines can clog them, damage them and in general makes a lot of extra work and expense for public utility operators.

“With dewatering sewage, states are looking to offer alternatives to land application for the solids. A number of places over the past few years are looking for proven alternatives to land applications” (because of permitting restrictions)/
As the population grows in some areas of the country, waste haulers have started to specialize. The key is where should the dewatered solids go? To a composting facility, used for land application, bio fuel or simply placed in a landfill?

“Do municipal organizations have responsibility for this material? Is this driven by individual pumpers or is it a regional approach?” DeRham said, posing the questions that many in the industry are considering.

“Economics are still totally driving the system. The business is maturing. We sell equipment that can handle 6,000 gallons of waste a day to 200,000 gallons a day. The biggest challenge is people are much more cautious about how they are spending their capital dollars to make sure they are getting the biggest bang for their buck,” he said.

Municipal wastewater treatment facilities are protecting their investment, limiting the types and amounts of waste accept. Landfills operators, too, are under pressure from a burgeoning population. Waste haulers are dealing with higher fees, limited places to dump their sludge and other dewatered waste. Business operators who want to explore innovative dewatering, composting and other sources for dealing with the material generally face a confusing array of regulations.

This is a challenging and interesting to be in the degreasing and dewatering industry – waste haulers, manufacturers, municipal operators and regulators are all trying to feel their way through. It is an interesting – and frustrating – time for those in the industry.

Some industry insiders predict that municipal operators will continue to develop their own degreasing and dewatering facilities – joining private entrepreneurs who seek alternative uses for sludge. At the very least, greater use of dewatering systems will relieve the burden on municipal systems and landfills. At best, they will be creating a product – compost or a source for biofuel – that help the dewatering systems meet their costs or a make a small profit.

Regardless, interest in dewatering and degreasing systems is growing. Regulators are still slow in many areas to get on board. Yet, the industry is trying to meet the needs – or demands – of business leaders, municipal officials and regulatory agencies. If the economy cooperates, it should be an interesting time period for everyone.