Thank you to the many customers and partners who visited our booth during WEFTEC 2018 in New Orleans last week. We welcomed nearly 300 guests and enjoyed seeing many of our sales partners from across the country. A special thanks to Best Equipment, our sales partner in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, for loaning us their new demo truck for the show.

On Thursday, September 13, 2018, Envirosight hosted a Q&A Introduction to Cooperative Purchasing webinar. Steve Sebastian, channel development manager for Envirosight, explained the basics of cooperative purchasing and the benefits that it can bring to an organization. In his decades of capital equipment sales and sales channel support, Steve has guided many municipalities and government agencies through enrolling and making purchases with purchasing cooperatives. Check out this sampling of the topics he shared with attendees:

Sewer systems have been around in one form or another for thousands of years. As technology advanced, pipeline materials have changed, improving durability and functionality. With all the developments over time, most utilities have to contend with multiple pipeline materials, each of which has different maintenance concerns and a different lifespan.

It’s a fact: The American workforce is getting older. The percentage of workers over the age of 65 has been on the rise since the 1990s and is expected to peak around 9% by 2042, nearly 3 times higher than 2002 numbers. Though economists love to fret about the aging population, there are many advantages to older employees actively participating in the workforce.This is especially true for wastewater workers, who bring a wealth of expertise and experience gained on the job.

With the start of summer comes hurricane season, but natural disasters—from blizzards to earthquakes—can disrupt daily life year round. The impact of natural disasters can be far-reaching and disrupt utilities and city operations. Floods, whether caused by snowmelt, hurricane, downpour or infrastructure damage, can quickly overwhelm collection systems and damage electric pump services. And earthquakes can destroy underground infrastructure in mere minutes.

Sewer laterals often don’t get much attention during regular CCTV inspections. Because municipalities are not responsible for them, they’re rarely on the usual schedule. This can leave a large portion of a collection system un-inspected, un-repaired and ready to cause problems. When laterals do end up on the docket, it’s usually for one of three reasons:

In case you missed out, here's a round-up of our favorite content from the past year. Check out our white papers, worksheets and webinars to improve your workflow, save money, keep your crew safe and get more done.

When rehabbing a sewer pipe, one of the first decisions you make is whether to use spot repair or end-to-end methods. To help simplify this decision, we’ve designed a Sewer Rehab Strategy Worksheet that helps municipal workers and rehab contractors make quick decisions about which approach to utilize in any given line. Get it now:

Sewer rehabilitation is resource intensive. The larger and older a sewer is, the more frequently it requires maintenance, and the more costly and time-consuming that maintenance can be. Many municipalities rely solely on end-to-end (manhole-to-manhole) rehabilitation techniques like CIPP, pipe bursting and slip-lining to repair failing lines. While end-to-end methods can repair common defects in sewer pipe, in certain situations they can be overkill and a waste of time and money. That’s where spot (or point) repairs are more useful. Because of their targeted nature, spot repairs are able to address localized defects less expensively, faster, and often with less disruption than end-to-end methods. When a single line has multiple defects, however, the decision between spot and end-to-end methods requires careful consideration.

Biohazards are everywhere, in every handshake, sneeze and door handle. What matters isn’t where they are, but how you protect yourself against them. For the average person, regular hand-washing and up-to-date vaccinations are ample protection. But, much like people working in hospitals and medical labs, those who work in and around sewers are at an increased risk of infection and disease from biohazard exposure. And, much like doctors and nurses take extra care to limit that exposure, so should wastewater workers take similar precautions.