Over the brook and through the woods one can find a place tucked away in a wooded corner of Marion where families of swans go every day to float upon sparkling wintery waters. Ducks congregate here and call it their home, and geese gather beneath clear blue skies under the watchful eyes of a loyal osprey couple that returns to this spot year after year.

Emerging from the surrounding woods is the occasional deer and random hungry coyote looking for a meal amongst the abundance of nature in this most unexpected habitat. There are goats that graze and chickens that roost to the distant humming of machines and pumps that operate as vital organs in a system constantly renewing a symbiotic cycle of life.

There to greet you are Samson and Goliath, a couple of llamas and the first friendly faces you will see as you round the bend and enter through the fenced-off area that protects this seemingly magical place. It is, in a way, if you want to talk about the miracle of modern engineering merging with biology – the miracle of poop processing.

Welcome to the Marion Wastewater Treatment Plant/petting zoo, our ‘number two’ installment of “Wastewater Treatment From Flush to Finish,” a tale that starts in your toilet and ends in Aucoot Cove – literally, the business of the ‘business’ of 1,648 homes in three main sections of Marion – the village, the “Berry” area, a part of Converse Road, and Delano and Dexter Beach.

In charge of this muck menagerie is Marion Water & Sewer Superintendent Frank Cooper. From his office in the control room, he operates the entire wastewater treatment process with a few clicks and keystrokes of his fingers, processing around 588,000 gallons of your flushings a day.

The plant uses a SCADE system which supervises and controls all the stops along the way once last night’s dinner makes its way from your house, through a low-pressure grinder pump, into the underground gravity system that pipes everything to 50 Benson Brook Road.

The computer screen looks a bit like a video game, except there is nothing ‘fun’ about wastewater treatment, unless you’re a fat, happy microscopic little anaerobic organism that’s got a 24-7 all-you-can-eat buffet of activated fudge. I mean sludge.

Cooper said a lot of work went into getting this software online and accessible via laptop and, only just recently, Cooper and his crew of four can now access the controls remotely using a smart phone app.

“This is something I’d been waiting for for some time,” said Cooper. If something were to need attention at the plant, “Now I don’t have to go running home if I’m out to dinner at Turk’s.”

An excursion of the site led by Superintendent/Tour Guide/Zoo Keeper Cooper through the plant began with the electrical room, in which is evidence of the complexity of Marion’s system.

This room of large computery-electric boxes full of technology and lined with rows of red and green lights, buttons, and gauges more sophisticated than this sentence is located beneath the main building along with the lab and the pump room, a room where the pipes run through assisted by, well, pumps.

A long pipe with the words “Waste Activated Sludge” on it hangs overhead, and pipes labeled “Wastewater” and “Plant Water” run parallel to each other in this rather tidy environment. It was a room for the imagination of one with little plumbing intellect. It all looked so clean and organized. You’d never know there was a nightmare of nasty flowing in such an organized fashion happening above.

Onward and upward to ground level, Cooper led me over to the two large side-by-side outside tanks where the real poop processing begins.

The tanks fill and alternate, with each running its own cycle. One does one thing while the other does its thing.

Approaching the tanks, we happened upon some ducks just hanging out in the sewer water floating with the floaters. They bolted from the pool of wastewater and Cooper said something while inspecting the tanks that made me pull a side look.

“This is looking good to me,” he said. “I like what I’m seeing. That’s a healthy-looking foam. A nice light brown.”

Just then the sound of pressurized air escaping surrounded us and I prayed that it was supposed to do that and I was just not unfortunate enough to be at the wrongest place at the wrongest time for an explosion.

Oh look, said Cooper. The aerator is turning on in Tank 2.

Aeration. The second step in the actual processing, after anoxic mix, which simply stirs the wastewater around. With aeration, tiny bubbles of air are released from the bottom and fizzle to the surface to oxygenate the “water” and make the little bacteria happy. (Think Wonka’s chocolate river.) It also helps release nitrogen, ‘number one’ offender in water pollution, an important matter that I swear we will get to.

After aeration, the wastewater just sits there in the ‘react’ part of processing where it is gently mixed to a finer consistency before the ‘settle’ process. That is when the heavier suspended solids sink to the bottom after the bacteria have digested their ‘food’ and dropped dead.

The ‘decant’ phase consists of a large trough that slowly pushes the wastewater down, acting like a French press – only this isn’t coffee and you certainly don’t want to drink it. From there, the diluted water travels to the equalization tank where it passes through a system of two large disks that further filters out the smaller solids.

The disk room wasn’t so bad, except for the swarms of dead poop flies stuck to the walls and the big lamp. They are called midges, and they look just like mosquitos, except they don’t bite, said Cooper reassuringly.

“There’s no such thing as a plant that doesn’t have them,” Cooper said. In the summer, sometimes there is an impenetrable cloud of them, just congregating above the two disks, reveling in the unnatural habitat we humans have created for them. (You’re welcome, midges.)

These disks give the wastewater its “final polishing,” as Cooper put it.

The UV room, where wastewater runs through for a final disinfecting, was my favorite room. Aside from the pretty lights, there was a non-wastewater smell to it I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Must, a sweet must. Old books. Yes, old books steeped in warm water. As a book lover, it was a smell I could only shamelessly describe as ‘sexy.’

I could have stayed in there longer, but there was more to see.

The clarified wastewater then begins the final leg of its journey. It flows through 4,000 feet of underground pipe, beneath Route 6, surfacing as “Effluent Brook,” which streams a half mile until reaching freedom in the marshes on the edge of Aucoot Cove.

Back at the plant, in addition to the goats, llamas, and chickens, there are these three elephants in the room, so to speak, and I was eager to meet them.

These three wastewater lagoons – the last stop for activated sludge and the center of the NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permit situation – are both critical and problematic now for Marion.

A critical component of the operation of the plant, the lagoons were created in 1971, a time when nitrogen pollution and the EPA were of no concern. That has changed and, with the EPA’s latest NPDES permit issued as a draft to the town, these unlined lagoons have got to go.

“We always knew that the day was coming that there would be a change in the process,” said Cooper. The levels of pollutants allowed have become more stringent with this new NPDES, and a number of municipalities are challenging the science behind the levels the EPA has determined at appropriate. “We’re not freaking out about that; we knew it was coming.”

The worst-case scenario would be a total overhaul of the plant. The town, however, has a defense it hopes will mitigate future costs to the town, although lining the lagoons is looking like it may be imminent.

Just by standing there looking at the 20 acres of water, covered with a thin sliver of silver ice with ducks standing on top and a family of five swans swimming on the far side of the largest lagoon, one would never know that a number of feet of condensed crap sits decomposing on the bottom.

Not only is it a seeming bird sanctuary, it also functions as a retaining system for overflow of sewage intake, holding it until it can be sent over for processing, with the sludge returning to settle on the bottom. Shutting them down would spell disaster for Marion.

“That underscores one reason why those lagoons are critical,” said Cooper.

The lagoons are simply lovely in the spring, or so I am told.

“I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of photos,” said Cooper. He has seen turtles, otters, even bird watchers who report rare species sightings.

“I got bird lovers out there and they freak out over what they see here,” said Cooper.    It is evident that Cooper takes pride in his work and in the lagoons.

“I’ve gotten a lot of compliments from the engineers on how well we do,” he said. “I know I love it here,” Cooper said looking out over the lagoons at the swans. “That’s why it’s so critical that they still have somewhere else to live.”

And who could argue that?

By Jean Perry