Technology and Me: Our Love/Hate Relationship By Mark Eddington

I arrived home the other night to witness my three children (2, 5, and 7) and wife (38) in a literal tug of war over our “family” I-PAD. While I too love Temple Run® as much as the next guy, it was at this point I realized technology really does have us all by the tail. This should not be any type of surprise to me, having recently experienced the implementation of a GIS and major upgrades to SCADA at our WWTP, but the visual of my family crystalized the whole matter. Don’t get me wrong, I love reminiscing with all you other old coots about our first beeper or bag phone, or the times before our spouses had a virtual fence linked to our cell phones. You remember those days, when we could actually get “lost” for an afternoon without having to come up with some explanation revolving around bad cell coverage, a dead battery, or that ringer that never got turned up after a big-time important meeting. The question becomes, where does today’s technology leave those of us who know just enough to get ourselves in trouble?

Certainly, we have options. We could go back to school and get a computer science degree, No. We could hire a full time IT guy to talk to me like I’m five and make me feel stupid on a daily basis…Big No. I suppose we could just hire an IT consultant that tells me I’m stupid without me even realizing it and get upset when I call him after hours, or say, before 9 am to come in and handle our server that just died (IF YOU DON’T WANT ME TO CALL OR TEXT YOU THEN DON’T GIVE ME YOUR DAMN CELL PHONE NUMBER!) Wow, I really didn’t intend this piece to turn into a rant, but as a wise man once said, “if your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail”.

Now that we have all that out of the way, I can get serious. I have, begrudgingly, resigned myself to the reality that technology is not going anywhere but forward and if we don’t try to adapt we will be left at the station muttering about the “good old days”. The conclusion is we can do more with less, and as frustrating as technology can be at times, it is a vehicle to that end. In the past two years our District has, implemented a GIS, improved our SCADA and automation to attain remote access, given each and every District employee an email account (now if I can just get them to check it regularly), and installed various flow monitoring equipment to transmit data directly back to our SQL server. These improvements have come with capital cost as well as recurring operation and maintenance costs, but they have also revolutionized how we perform our job. It has allowed us to eliminate our night shift and bring two operators on to our day shift, essentially allowing us to increase production without hiring. Our ability to collect and process data, better utilize manpower, and provide enhanced services to our customers. We have found it much easier to access historical information through the GIS database rather than combing through countless spreadsheets as was common practice in the past. Don’t get me wrong, these improvements were not painless and our decision makers did need a great deal of convincing to make the capital expenditures, but they are working and our staff has answered the bell showing commitment to these changes.

The Illinois Section of CSWEA created an IT Committee in 2012 to better address the growing need of our members to stay current with this emerging field. As many of you may be aware, CSWEA, Fox Valley Operators Association, the Illinois Section of AWWA, and the College of

McHenry County hosted the first annual Midwest Water and Wastewater Technology Technical Conference (T-CON) last summer. This conference was attended by over 150 individuals and centered on technology in the water and wastewater industry. This year’s T-CON is scheduled on June 5th at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois. If you use technology you should find a way to attend this conference.