Transcript for Recycled water workplace interview

[Speaker: Ahmet Hashim]

My name is Ahmet Hashim. I'm a team leader in the wastewater reuse operations area of Greater Western Water. I look after four recycled water plants. I've been with the organisation for 38 years, 11 of which has been in recycled water.

How is working in recycled water different to other areas?

I really like working in water because it's such a diverse area. We've traditionally focused on drinking water and wastewater. But with advanced technologies, we are now able to produce recycled water from wastewater. We can provide this to industrial irrigation and residential customers, and by them using it, we are able to conserve our valuable and precious resource, drinking water.

We work with a range of professionals. In the operations space, we have chemical engineers. We have environmental scientists. We have lab technicians that support day to day.

From maintenance, we have electrical, mechanical engineers, electricians, instrumentation technicians, mechanics. We use a lot of service providers that support the many, many bits of equipment we've got out here. And all of that work helps us produce safe, reliable, high quality, recycled water for our customers and communities.

We also produce biosolids as a byproduct of the treatment process, which we send off to a composting facility, and it gets reused on farms.

How did you end up working at a water treatment plant?

So, when I was in high school, I always liked solving problems, mathematical problems, and I enjoyed the science subjects. That led me to an engineering degree. I got into the water sector. I've worked in various areas of the water sector, from water to wastewater, from the planning to design, construction, and now I'm in operations.

15 years ago, recycled water was a new area of our industry that started emerging. An opportunity came along to operate these facilities, and I found it very interesting working with a range of skilled people, learning new things and having an impact on delivering safe, reliable water services to our customers.

What sort of technologies are used in this emerging area?

Digital technologies underpin these recycled water plants. They help us be fully automated, enable us to remotely monitor these 24/7, so we don't have to be here all the time.

During the building of these plants, we also build 3D models, which we can test and make sure they're safe before we construct them. Also, during the operation of these plants, we use technologies such as drones to inspect our tanks. We use robotic cleaning methods where we don't have to enter tanks to clean them, and we can do this remotely.

The wastewater arrives at the plant through our pump station at Altona. We then transfer that water through pumps to our inlet structure here to my left. This is the first place of treatment. The first phase of our treatment is we remove the solids and litter and plastic.

The water then moves across into our, what we call our, reactor tanks, where the bacteria munch away at the nutrients, and the solids settle out. The water then is moved across into another tank where it is filtered. We then UV-disinfect the water, so it's then safe to discharge to the bay or for the next phase of treatment. And we undertake further disinfection so we can create fit for purpose recycled water.

Where is recycled water already being used?

Here, what we can do is the water that's used in your toilets, your showers, your kitchen, we can treat that water at our plants and make it into recycled water. Recycled water is used throughout Victoria, both in metro and regional areas. Examples of use of recycled water: used for manufacturing, used for farming, used for recreational reserves, used for residential use in some areas for toilet flushing and gardens.

What is one strange fact about recycled water plants?

We come across a lot of unusual objects that come into our treatment plants. From mobile phones to kids’ toys, and the odd false tooth. The lesson is that if you drop something down the toilet, we might put on display here at the treatment plant.