Sewage Treatment from 10,000 Feet

This photo taken while flying over Phoenix a couple of days ago will never replace Google Earth's. The windows of the jet looked like they had been cleaned with Brillo pads inside and out. I don't have a great camera, and the angle from window to treatment plant was just plain wrong. However, when you write a sewer blog, you are happy to have found fresh grist for the mill, or perhaps more precisely, not-so-fresh excretia in a traditional treatment mode.

Please employ the far better rendition off of Google Earth to get the true feel of this, where you can zoom down to gaze into the frothing currents of the aeration tanks! Fortunately, the resolution isn't so great that you can identify anything untoward in the clarifiers (the solid bundles probably didn't make it through the screening process intact anyway). The address to input into Google Earth for a better view is: 5615 South 91st Avenue, Tolleson, AZ.

There are two other treatment plants for Phoenix for which you can also Google Earth!

• 23rd Avenue - use these latitude and longitude coordinates for fun instead of an address:

33.424727, -112.111138

• Cave Creek - 22841 North Cave Creek Road
, Phoenix, AZ

For a little background of likely useless information:

• The wastewater system includes two city-owned wastewater plants (a third is not), almost 5,000 miles of sewer mains and 78,000 manholes.

• More than 250 million gallons of wastewater is treated each day, servicing about 2.5 million customers (just think, in 2016 we too will become "customers," not depositors into septic tanks!)

• More than 90 percent of Phoenix’s wastewater is highly treated and reused for crops, power generation and turf irrigation.

• Phoenix uses cameras and high tech equipment to clean grease, roots and other debris from about a third of its sewer lines each year.

• Numerous award-winning videos and public service announcements have been produced featuring actor Leslie Nielsen.

• The City of Phoenix Water Services Department is more than 100 years old.

• Phoenix, Arizona is the nation’s fifth largest city, encompassing about 540 square miles.

• There are about 30 sewage lift stations (don't they know for sure???).

For an interesting read on Maricopa County, the existing and planned wastewater treatment facilities, go peruse this pdf!

http://www.azmag.gov/documents/pdf/cms.resource/wastewater-treatment.pdf

For some fun photos of googled term "city Phoenix wastewater treatment plant" (although a nuclear power plant in Michigan found its way in this collection), visit:

http://www.google.com/search?q=city+phoenix+wastewater+treatment+plant&client=safari&sa=N&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=lG6uU4-gEcr9oASGh4DICA&ved=0CBsQsAQ4Cg&biw=1439&bih=679