VACUUM TRUCK TRAINING ONLINE
Our e-Learning program is a reality. The National Association of Wastewater Transporters Inc. vacuum truck training course presented at this year’s Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo International was filmed by a professional production company. The streaming video is online, on demand at www.nawt.org. Filming the course enabled us to create a classroom atmosphere with questions from the audience and answers from the instructors. Even the PowerPoint presentations and field components are included.
The course costs $175, and subscribers can log on and off as often as they like for two months. The manual is a free download, but printed copies cost $35 each. Chapters in the manual end with review questions. Anyone with additional questions can e-mail a NAWT instructor and receive a prompt response.
After completing the course, subscribers will receive a certificate worth six CEU hours. To become a NAWT-certified vacuum truck technician, subscribers must take a final exam administered either by Prometric, an outside testing service with centers throughout the United States, or a NAWT proctor. The Prometric testing fee is $75 and the cost will vary with NAWT proctors.
ON THE WEB
Thank you to everyone who made our booth a destination at this year’s Pumper & Cleaner Expo. We enjoyed a constant flow of traffic and answered many interesting technical questions, which will be addressed in a future column. One general question, however, regarded when to renew NAWT certifications. As a result, we are developing a Web page where members can access their contact information, course credentials and certification status. In case you haven’t visited our site in a while, all our Expo Education Day presentations starting from 2007 are posted.
SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT
NAWT received eight applications — a record — for the $1,000 William Hapchuk Memorial Scholarship Fund. Alyssa Parnaby, a senior at Berkshire High School in Burton, Ohio, is our 2009 recipient. Her father, Donald Parnaby, is an Ohio Waste Haulers Association Qualified Service Provider and service technician at Tim Frank Septic Cleaning Co. in Huntsburg, Ohio. Parnaby is applying her scholarship toward tuition at Kent State University where she plans to major in English and become a teacher. Her hobbies are painting, drawing, cooking and sewing.
Applicants were asked to write a 500-word essay on the role pumpers can play in reusing waste materials. Parnaby’s composition followed the stages of dewatering septage and listed the benefits of using the treated effluent for irrigation and the biosolids for agricultural fertilizer. She concluded that reducing the amount of waste would be impossible without pumpers. “It is because of them that a good amount of our waste does not become the wasted,” she wrote. The scholarship is available to high school seniors or full-time college students.
The 2010 scholarship question, set by the NAWT Scholarship Committee, is: Onsite systems treat wastewater for more than 25 percent of households nationwide, and the interest in installing decentralized systems instead of hooking to municipal sewers is increasing. In many regions, land development occurs only by installing alternative wastewater treatment technologies. To ensure that these systems consistently produce the mandatory level of treatment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sees a need for their operation and management. What roles can pumpers play in your community to ensure that these systems are operated and maintained properly, thereby protecting public health and the environment?
The deadline for scholarship submissions is Feb. 1, 2010. Download applications at www.nawt.org.
WASTE TREATMENT SYMPOSIUM UPDATE
The NAWT Waste Treatment Symposium will be held on Oct. 9-10 at the Renaissance Orlando Resort SeaWorld (www.renaissanceseaworldorlando.com). To qualify for the hotel discount of $150 per night double occupancy plus tax, you must register for your room by calling NAWT at 800/236-6298. These rates apply only for Oct. 8 and 9, after which they are $217.
The Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference follows at the Orange County Convention Center on Oct. 12-14. Registration to the Waste Treatment Symposium includes free admission to the WEFTEC exhibit hall on Monday (www.weftec.org). The hall is open all three days from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Last year, 1,111 venders participated, many with information on waste treatment.
The registration fee for the treatment symposium is $275 for members and $375 for nonmembers. It includes classroom presentations, field demonstration and lunch both days. Sign up early; space is limited to 200 people. Based on the enthusiasm for the symposium at the Pumper & Cleaner Expo, we’ll hit and probably surpass that number. Download the symposium registration form at www.nawt.org, and don’t miss seeing equipment process septage and grease trap waste and learning from the most competent, knowledgeable people in the field.
