Sewage Treatment Plant Audit Checklist

Sewage treatment plants remove wastewater before discharging it back into lakes and oceans for reuse, necessitating careful consideration when it comes to managing such facilities as untreated waste can contain toxic chemicals harmful to both humans and the environment.

Encourage safety leaders and all operations managers to regularly attend conferences, meetings and webinars related to industrial safety in general and wastewater treatment plant safety in particular. This will ensure all employees are adequately educated on how to deal with specific risks effectively while preventing accidents from happening.

1. General Inspection

Maintaining safety in a wastewater treatment plant is of utmost importance. Without constant reminders from employees that accidents and injuries are rare occurrences, they may begin taking safety for granted, leading to complacency within the workplace and having an adverse impact on productivity.

Reporting safety statistics prominently is also crucial to making safety a top priority in your facility and reducing the likelihood of accidents or injuries.

Before visiting a site, gather all available information regarding the subject system. If records are unavailable, make a notation in your inspection report that they cannot be located. Once on-site, locate and gain access to all treatment tanks to assess liquid, scum and sludge levels within each one.

2. Electrical

At wastewater treatment plants, much of the equipment relies on electricity for power. If there is an unexpected outage, all purification systems and filtration processes will stop running until power returns.

Sewage treatment plants are responsible for handling all waste water generated in an area and then returning it back into rivers, lakes, or oceans after being thoroughly purified and purified. This process ensures the continued health and welfare of wildlife while keeping water free of pollutants that may endanger aquatic organisms or humans alike.

Electrical inspections are necessary for maintaining this equipment, which includes testing electrical wiring, motor controls and other systems that ensure quality wastewater effluent. A backup generator should also be included to keep machines operating if there’s ever an extended power outage.

3. Mechanical

Regular inspection of sewage treatment plants must take place to identify any mechanical faults or malfunction that might lead to untreated water being discharged into the ocean, blocked pipelines or even failure of some components.

Inspection must take place to ensure the pumps and air lift return are working as they should, while sludge content must also be monitored to make sure it does not surpass limits set by governing bodies.

Employee safety at sewage treatment plants is of utmost importance, which is why familiarizing all employees with the documented response plan and conducting drills regularly are necessary to reduce mishandling, which could result in an accident or injury, while simultaneously mitigating panic or confusion during real emergencies.

4. Process Controls

Throughout the water treatment process, various tests are conducted to ensure optimal organic material breakdown. These include measuring pH, temperature, BOD, Dissolved Oxygen (DO), and Solids Retention Time. Finally, during post aeration basining stage of water treatment process to raise DO levels to allow discharge into streams.

Physical treatment of wastewater involves screening, grit removal and sedimentation to remove impurities from the water and lower levels of solid materials that could otherwise harm aquatic life by depleted oxygen supplies and decayed solids taking over space in the environment.

Check that all employees are familiar with your emergency response plan by posting it throughout your facility and conducting regular drills.

5. Laboratory

At factories equipped with sewage treatment plants, it is crucial that an environmental assessment be conducted with keen scrutiny on all environmental aspects and waste management practices are properly taken care of, as untreated wastewater contains chemical loads which could pose dangers both to human health and the environment.

Sewage waste passes through screens which remove coarse and fine solid material, then it is dumped into large primary sedimentation tanks where most of the remaining suspended solids settle out to form sludge.

Sludge is stored for 20 to 30 days in large tanks known as digesters where it will be broken down by bacteria to reduce volume, odour and pathogens that could potentially cause disease. Biological measurements like BOD and coliform index will then be assessed in the laboratory in order to verify whether treatment processes are working efficiently.