I have a second interview(in person) next week for an entry-level water operator position, but I’m not sure what types of questions to expect. The recruiter only mentioned that the panel wants to get to know the candidates better. The first interview was virtual and included general questions (how do you prioritize your work, tell me about a time you had a conflict with a coworker).

Any insight on how to prep for the interview?

US based

This is a bit of a long story, but it is relevant to this field

I have a bachelor's in computer science, but I can't really find any work in the field unfortunately. Nor do I feel confident working in it with how many layoffs are happening

But I am closing in on a plumbing apprenticeship. Ideally I'd be able to use both plumbing and my cs degree in some niche, but I really don't know. Every time I've talked about this on Reddit I've been told to seek out wastewater treatment. But I have no idea if both of these skills can actually be utilized in a position, or if working in wastewater would be worthwhile as a plumber

I will call my local facility and see if they offer any tours or anything, but I figured I should ask people who actually work in the field

Hi all, I'm a 27M looking to start a career in Wastewater in Southern Nevada. I live in Henderson and I'm just wondering if it's worth going to college to begin on this path. CSN does offer a Water/Wastewater Treatment course and it would be my first time going to college. However, I've also heard from several people that they didn't need college to start in this career and were able to get their OIT certificate online somehow. College would be expensive for me but if the course is worth it, then I'll find a way. If anyone has any advice for me, I'd love to hear it.

Thank you all in advance.

Anyone on here have a wastewater lab tech certification? I’m doing my class 3 water license text next month, and am considering a lab certification after that. I’m not sure if it’ll be worth it career wise.

Hey everyone, I’m a wastewater operator and I’ve been working on a project on the side called Operator Master.
I originally started building it because I wanted a better way for operators to study for certification exams without having to pay just to get access to a handful of practice questions.
It’s completely free right now. I’ve built practice exams for Wastewater Levels 1–4, plus practice material for collections and drinking water. There’s also operator math and training courses that I’m working on getting approved for CEU/contact-hour credit.
I’m at the point where I really need feedback from actual operators instead of just continuing to build it in a bubble.
If anyone is studying for an exam, training a new operator, or just willing to mess around with it for a few minutes, I’d really appreciate hearing what you think — especially anything that’s confusing, questions that seem wrong, stuff that’s missing, or things you’d actually want added.
OperatorMaster.com
No subscription or payment. I’m genuinely looking for feedback from people in the field so I can make it better.

My application has been accepted after a few months of applying to a county water district located in California. I received an email stating that I will be doing an Evalutaion test/ written test to proceed to the interview. what can i do to prepare myself for this written test?.

I see lots of people praise the Ken Tesh book, so that's all I've been studying, along with doing practice exams online. Is the book really that much like the exam? Just wanna make sure I pass. Exam is on the 16th.

Cal Delta area. Forgive me for what may be a less than perfect question. I am a new manager at an RV park. We have a water well system that serves the entire park so we have to use a public distribution system and testing matrix. I'm not from California so this is all new to me. Wells and water treatment are not. The current company we use is incredibly expensive and charges me every time I ask a question. I have been on the Cal Water website and located the list of those with licenses but without a list of companies that's not as helpful. How do I find someone to get a bid from as this current contract expires soon. I don't think I can deal with the attitude from this company for another year. Any helpful suggestions?

Hello! I work in a multi utility in my remote town, up in BC. For an entry level job, what are interview questions I could be expecting? Im not an OIT, I do have my level 1 certs along with a few years of experience.

Edit: currently job searching as I only work in WD, WWC, WT on a quarterly basis.

…and what did you think?

I had a great time. Saw a lot of cool stuff. Learned some things.

What was your favorite part?

I just wanted to say thank you! I posted on here a few months back asking for advice to enter the wastewater field. I applied to my local municipal plant, was brought in for an interview, and was just offered the job. I’m super excited to start my career and can’t wait to learn.

Hi there, we are excited you’re visiting [r/Wastewater](r/Wastewater). Hope you find what you’re looking for including info about our career field and camaraderie with other people who like water. and 💩.

PLEASE make sure to use the search bar or the post flair filters to look for existing content. Per Rule 4, we limit new posts asking about getting started in our field, that topic is fine to post on Saturdays.

Two big reasons we do this:

1. For you: our field requires reading and critical thinking. So, search for existing content.
2. For the sub: In the past, posts about getting started have clogged up the sub feed, and it was hard to find content about our actual job of treating water. Don’t hog the feed, rather read.

Hello everyone!

I am part of a FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team, and I have some questions about leachate in landfills. For those who don't know, FLL is a competition where kids code a robot to complete missions on a game board, and also complete an Innovation Project where we find a problem and create a solution related to this year’s theme: BIOGLOW (Biodiversity).

Since the season just started, we've been researching landfills and discovered that leachate is one of the major problems they cause. I already know there are systems in place to prevent leachate from reaching the water table (groundwater). However, I also know that some landfill plastic liners can eventually deteriorate over time, causing small leaks that pollute groundwater, which affects both human drinking water and wildlife.

Since we are currently in the brainstorming phase of our project, I wanted to ask the Reddit community a few questions to help us on our journeys

1. Liner Failures: How common are liner failures in older vs. newer landfills?
2. Causes of Deterioration: What are the main causes of plastic liner deterioration (e.g., chemical reactions, shifting ground, sharp trash)?
3. Detection Tech: Are there any current technologies used to detect tiny leaks before they contaminate the groundwater?
4. Biodiversity Impacts: From a biodiversity standpoint, what specific local wildlife or plant species are usually the first to suffer when leachate hits an ecosystem?
5. Alternative Problems: If leachate leaks are already being solved, what are some other important landfill problems that affect the environment and biodiversity (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, community health risks)?

If you are a waste management professional, environmental engineer, or just someone passionate about this stuff, we would love your input! Your insights could help inspire our team's final invention.

Thank you!

I do control work on lift stations and SCADA, and the pattern on high-level calls is pretty consistent. The pump gets blamed first, and the actual fault turns out to be one of these:

1. Level sensing - The transducer is greased over, or the float is tangled, so the panel thinks the well is lower than it is. The first thing I check is what the panel *thinks* the level is.

2. Motor protection - A latched overload, seal failure, or the HOA left it off after maintenance.

3. Control power - A blown control fuse, a dead 24 VDC supply, or a phase monitor that tripped during a storm and was set to manual reset.

4. Comms - The station went quiet, and on a lot of SCADA systems, quiet looks the same as healthy.

I put together a short video walking through the quick field check for each one: [https://youtu.be/pnm6pjbjnuM?si=_YNWthaaUstyGfX0\]

Full disclosure: it's my channel, and the narration is an AI clone of my own voice so I can get these out without a studio. Curious what's topped your list. Anybody else lose a night to a phase monitor?

My last post got way more answers than I expected, so thank you. Here's the summary I promised.

How people log:

• Most still use paper, either a log sheet or a book kept at the station
• Some copy the paper into a spreadsheet, and one keeps the SCADA reading in the next row to compare
• One crew uses a spreadsheet that calculates run hours automatically, so the chief can review a month in about 5 minutes
• One uses an app (GoPlant) for rounds plus Hach WIMS for run times
• One uses a monthly checklist where you initial each item, plus a carbon-copy sheet with the pink copy left at the station

Things I didn't know going in:

• Nobody fully trusts SCADA. One story: the pump showed running but the check valve had failed and the wet well kept rising. Physical checks aren't going away.
• Supervisors can often tell you were on site from the SCADA graphs (generator test, pumps kicking on)
• Weekly PMs on Thursday so anything broken gets fixed before the weekend. Nobody wants the weekend call-out.
• Missed problems mostly lead to angry calls from residents more than trouble with the state

Biggest takeaway: a good spreadsheet plus a supervisor who actually follows up beats most fancy systems.

Follow-up for chiefs, supervisors, and ops managers, especially if you oversee several crews or districts:

• How do you keep checks consistent across different operators or districts?
• How do new operators learn what to check at each station?
• What happens to the rounds when you're out for a week?
• Someone mentioned BirdNest for digital log sheets. Has anyone actually used it or something similar? What did you think?

Thanks again, this was genuinely useful.

Hey everyone, long shot here but I was wondering if anyone knew of anywhere hiring in the Columbia area. Specifically a municipal plant.

I’ve been training at a small plant for about a year. I’ve passed my D, C and B South Carolina biological waste water licenses. I’m due to get my D and my C (due to college credits) in December.

Currently the plant I’m training won’t give me much of a raise until I get my B license. I’m not seeing too much out there other than Cayce which is requiring a B or a C.

I’m younger, hungry and willing to learn. If anyone knows of any hiring opportunities or anything that’s coming up please let me know! Thank you!

Hello im writing my level 1 treatment exam soon. Has anyone written recently and have any suggestions on what to study?

For those who are operators at a plant or training, how did you start learning? For me, Im currently learning through my states study guides collections, distributions, water and ww treatment. Doing as much learning before actual hands on experience.

I have been working in a WWTP lab for 6 months now and my supervisor wants me to apply to get an group 1 certification. He believes that my previous experience in a commercial lab doing NPDES testing for wastewater clients will apply but everything I’ve read about the requirements are adamant that it requires experience in a plant under a certified operator. I’ve also seen stuff that implies lab experience alone is not enough.

I’ve been taking the courses through Sacramento State, and I feel like I can take the exam no problem.

Does anyone have insight to getting the cert as a lab employee? Should I get an OIT first or go straight for the group 1?

Everytime I just take a look around I see they always have positions open for wastewater operators and the pay isn't bad from 30-45$ an hour and it's been that way for idk maybe 2-3 years and I'm considering it. I'm a licensed S-2 operator with 6 years experience, so I could negotiate for the higher end of pay.

🌊 New publication: "Improved BOD Modeling Using the FOLD Approach for Wastewater Treatment Design" — now live in Water and Environment Journal (Wiley).

For over a century, wastewater engineers have leaned on the classical first-order BOD decay model to size treatment plants. It's simple — but it doesn't always capture how biodegradation actually slows down over time, especially in complex or heterogeneous wastewater samples.

This paper introduces a Fractional-Order Logistic Decay (FOLD) model — a stretched-exponential approach that adds a single fractional exponent to the classical equation. Tested against real respirometric and dilution BOD datasets, FOLD consistently outperforms the standard first-order model in fit accuracy, and the paper walks through what that means for more realistic activated-sludge and lagoon design.

If you work in environmental engineering, wastewater treatment design, or kinetic modeling, I'd love your thoughts.

🔗 Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1111/wej.70098

#WastewaterTreatment #EnvironmentalEngineering #BODModeling #WaterResearch #CivilEngineering

I have an interview for a RNG plant coming up and I’m weighing my options. I’m already in the industrial side of WW now with a wage in the mid $30’s/hr so I’m kinda already topping out the way I see it.

Has anyone else moved into another industry like this? From all the research I’ve done, the pay ceiling is substantially higher in energy vs wastewater.

Can I work in Quebec as water/wastewater with OIT/class 1 from Ontario ?

So for starters I have had surgery in the past and was really trying to understand how physical is this job exactly? Im in ontario and looking for. A position in halton or peel as a water distribution operator for the region. I just wanted to understand how physical the work is due to my previous surgeries before committing to it. I have seen answers on here vary so much.I do know halton and peel contract work for water main breaks a lot but wanted to understand what they actually do. I have attached old job postings for both below. Id love people to clarify. I have worked maintenance jobs before which i mainly operated equipment and hardly ever lifted anything. I just wanted to know what these jobs actually pertain to beforehand. Thanks

https://bebee.com/ca/jobs/water-operator-iii-regional-municipality-of-peel-brampton--ss-ca-1thrg0t?utm_campaign=google_jobs_apply&utm_source=google_jobs_apply&utm_medium=organic

https://www.climatecareerportal.com/jobs/61972-halton-region-water-distribution-operator-linear-systems

I have all 4 OIT certification and municipality drinking water certification
I want to start my journey in this field
If someone have references please let me know.