Awards & Certificates
California Water Environment Association - San Francisco Bay Section
Operator of the Year
Awarded in 2018 to Senior Plant Operator James Petalio, this recognizes outstanding contributions to the operations of wastewater treatment facilities and the application of knowledge to improve plant
processes.
Water Environment Federation
The 2019 Operator Ingenuity Award was given to Senior Plant Operator James Petalio for reconfiguring the District’s chlorine analyzers.
From the Water Environment Federation website:
This award goes to James Petalio of the Rodeo Sanitary District (Rodeo, Calif.) who was dealing with constant chlorine dosing alarms after hours. The alarms triggered the facility’s sodium bisulfite metering pump to run at 100% automatically to prevent a chlorine violation. The problem was solved by simply raising reagent bottles (acetate and potassium iodide buffer solution) from below the chlorine analyzer unit to above it. Removing the need for the reagent dosing pump to overcome the head of lifting reagents up to the analyzer stabilized the process and eliminated the alarms. This straightforward fix saved the district $1,200 in overtime costs and more than $12,800 per year in sodium bisulfite costs.