Berney Sadler, Jr. is the section supervisor for the Guam Waterworks Authority's wastewater treatment facilities. He took on the additional duties of being tour guide to the newly-renovated Agana Sewage Treatment Plant. Sadler says that the upgrades began in March 2006 and should be done by January 26, 2007. "Everything basically is new except the building and the structure itself," he explained, "so it's almost 100% new facility."


Out stroll through the new facility began in what is essentially the brains of the plant. The brand new control room, like the rest of the plant, was gutted and replaced with entirely new equipment. All the pumps and other equipment in the plant can be monitored and operated from this room. Next we moved onto the area of the plant where the real work is done: the headworks. From this point on, we saw nothing but brand new equipment. Terms like slewskates, flowmeters, clarifiers, clarifier flights, motors, digestors, centerfuges and a whole bunch of other things I don't pretend to understand were exhibited. But essentially, sadler told me they all work in unison on the dewatering process. Which was good enough for me.


From the headworks, the raw sewage (or "flow" as its apparently called) is passed through several channels until it gets to the clarifier. There, it pretty much does what it says it does: clarify the water. It's basically a series of holding tanks for sewage. These tanks allow dirt and other hard materials to sink to the bottom while these things called flights skim the oil and grease off the top of the water. The dirt oil and grease is all collected together, forming a sort of sludge.

Then the remaining water is pumped into chambers in what resemble giant washing machines, the digestors.


These digestors are equipped with aerators which put oxygen into the water, allowing for bacteria to break down other organic materials and turn them into carbon dioxide. Then there's the centrifuge, which is a machine that takes the sludge from the clarifying chambers and spins it until all the water is extracted and separated leaving behind a dry solid material that can be used as fertilizer. All the rest of the water has been treated and can be pumped through the outfall out to sea.


Finally, we were led into what acts like the heart of the plant, the pump room. Just like the main organ of the human body, this vital room pumps all the sewage and water to anywhere in the plant in essence keeping the plant going. Sadler says that once the plant is completed work on a new sewage outfall will begin probably sometime in March.


So based on my tour through the Agana Sewage Treatment Plant, we can expect cleaner water in a couple of months. Sadler says that these upgrades will put the plant up to par with federal standards.