The ops challenge committee kicked this year with a meeting at the annual conference in Boston. All event coordinators were present. This year’s new challenges included preparing for the new lab and maintenance events. My most personal challenge was procuring the Wilo Pump/mixer skid for training day which required lots of emails and phone calls. The unit was supposed to be in Nashua two weeks prior to the training day. We wanted to give the event coordinator, Randy Mandra, plenty of time to review and learn the event, but the skid did not arrive until the day before training day on April 30th.

Training day was well attended. All six New England states were represented. I was very excited to find that five teams were training and practicing to be for one of three spots to represent NEWEA at WEFTEC. Massachusetts Water Pollution Control Association sent two teams to training day, but one had to bow out of the NEWEA regional competition at the last minute. I was a little disappointed but happy to hear that they would most likely compete next year. My three year goal is to have all six states compete, so I have two more years to achieve that.

This year’s NEWEA competition was definitely a memorable one, in many ways. There were two veteran teams from Maine and New Hampshire, a re-structured team from Rhode Island (members of which had been dealing with devastating and historical flooding) and a brand new team from Massachusetts. The setup was a miserable one where we had to have the safety scaffolding up by mid day Sunday so teams could practice on Monday morning. Due to the usual and unpredictable weather in Maine, event coordinators and volunteers set-up equipment while dodging heavy rain, severe winds and tornado warnings. By the end, it was a first for NEWEA by allowing teams to practice before the competition.

The Cliff House in Ogunquit provided us with one of the most picturesque Ops Challenge competition sites that I have seen. We set up the equipment for collection, safety and pump events on the grassy spots above a cliff bordering the ocean, with vistas of Boon Island and Nubble light Houses and Southern Maine’s rocky coast line as our background. Tuesday’s competition went extremely well, with only two team protests that were amicably resolved.

Each team came a way with trophies and the final results are: forth place went to the Rhode Island Sludge Slingers, third place went to the new team, the MASSerators, second place to Maine’s Force Maine, and the New Hampshire Seacoast Sewer Snakes topped the competition. I have a good feeling that these four teams will be back next year.

NEWEA will be sending the top 3 teams to the national competition to be held during WEFTEC10 in New Orleans, LA.

Learn more about Ops Challenge and how to get involved or maybe Ops Challenge Sponsorship!

Written By André Brousseau Ops Challenge Chair