Bikes at sewage plant

[shootingstar]

Part of my job is thrilling...visiting wastewater plants in our municipality to see my dept.'s clients. (Well, seriously the new facilities are quite interesting....LEEDS certified, green roofs, etc.)

I was given a tour..and told yes, on these big freakin' expanses of land and multiple buildings out in the middle of nowhere, there are bicycles and golf carts for employees to get around.

They could also cycle in the underground tunnels connecting buildings...where there is kms. of piping.

[Tri Girl]

Sounds good to me. ;)
Although I wonder if you ever get over the smell....

[OakLeaf]

That's terrific. :)

I wonder whatever happened to my sixth grade homeroom teacher. I don't even remember her first name, so I can't google her. She obviously believed that sixth grade is the time when kids are old enough to start understanding the consequences of our actions.

My class toured the sewage plant. I hope the field trip brought all my classmates the lifetime awareness of waste and precious water, that it helped bring me.

The class ahead of me toured a slaughterhouse. Nowadays, slaughterhouses won't even let adult "outsiders" (Michael Pollan, Robert Kenner, et al.) visit. :(

[tulip]

Sounds good to me. ;)
Although I wonder if you ever get over the smell....

If it's working right, it doesn't smell.

[malkin]

I thought you were a librarian?!
I must have you mixed up with someone else.

[PamNY]

Shootingstar, it's great that they have bikes. You might suggest adult kick scooters, too. I don't know which ones are available in Canada, but they might be simpler to use and less expensive than bikes.

We have a state park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverbank_State_Park) built atop a sewage plant. There is occasionally a little odor, but most of the time, it isn't smelly at all.

[shootingstar]

There are odor control mechanisms and systems when sewer water is treated at the newer built facilities.

My role covers more knowledge/document/content management which still uses librarian skills/training (alot of my colleagues are in these areas now).....my jobs have taken me into fire stations, courthouses, construction site trailers, etc. where clients work and use/access their info.

Pam, there must be other several examples of plants disguised cleverly. One of ours even has a tree farm...onsite to provide tree saplings to local parks owned by the municipality. Land won't be used yet for expansion for another 20 yrs. So might as well make good use of empty land. :)

[OakLeaf]

The (older) plants near me ALWAYS smell. It's just worse on some days than others. I can't believe that they're always malfunctioning?

[Kiwi Stoker]

A friend of mine used to run a oil terminal/storage facility.
She got a fleet of bikes for her staff to get around on for doing checks etc.
Much safer than vehicles.

[shootingstar]

Security guards and airport employees are allowed to use the work bikes and bike inside the airport.

We saw them in Montreal and Frankfurt airports. (http://thirdwavecyclingblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/cycling-to-airport-departure-gates/)

It must be drag to smell it, Oak. Sounds like those facilities may have not been upgraded... wonder if anyone has complained from an environmental standpoint.
The facility that I visited is partnering with the local university where the uni will build a wastewater research and testing facility nearby. Another facility I dropped by, was water quality testing, etc. Just an architecturally gorgeous building. Outside there are test landscape areas for drought-resistant, prairie grasses. They too also have a couple of work bikes for staff to bike around. I'm not sure how often staff use them.

I'm trying to imagine, Oak taking a group of children to a slaughterhouse these days. Not sayin' to protect children, but an abbatoir is abit much.

[Becky]

I routinely visit industrial sites for work, and bikes or trikes are quite common. I think it's pretty awesome!

[Tri Girl]

I'm a librarian (although some days my school seems like a sewage treatment plant). ;)

The treatment plant near my house smells horrid all the time. I didn't know they were NOT supposed to smell...

[shootingstar]

Well, maybe it's time a bunch of citizens raised some "stink". Keep at it for awhile from time to time..to get the municipality to do something about it. But it would cost money.

I toured a sewage plant as a kid on a school trip. Yep, it did stink at the time. :p

[malkin]

It sounds like a cool job. Librarian is pretty cool too.