Today we’re going to Antarctica, one of the world’s coldest and most pristine places. Specifically, we are going to The US McMurdo Station, the largest science station on the continent. It also has over three hundred toilets. So, where does the wastewater go, and how is treated? In this episode, you’ll find answers.
Learn more about the McMurdo Station here.
Yubecca Bragg, lead Lead Waste Water Operator at the US McMurdo Station
Sarah Eckart, Communications Specialist with the NSF office of polar programs
Transcript
Robert Osborne:
Welcome to The Outfall, where we share the back stories of our water world. Today, we’re going to Antarctica, one of the world’s coldest and most pristine places. Specifically, we’re going to the US McMurdo Station, the largest science station on the continent, with a harbor, three airfields, and more than 100 buildings. It sounds like a mini city, right? Well, McMurdo Station has over 300 toilets. So, where does all the wastewater go? How is it treated? In this episode, you’ll find the answers and understand better where all the bio salads go. It’s not what you think, and why you should not eat every tomato if it’s grown in Antarctica. Let’s first meet our tour guide, Yubecca. She has one of the most exciting jobs in the station.
Yubecca Bragg:
My name is Yubecca Bragg, and I am the lead wastewater operator for McMurdo Station. This is going to be my 24th deployment. So I pretty much, it’s pretty straightforward with what I take and how I prepare. It’s very minimal these years. Mostly it’s hustling around trying to finish up harvesting and winterizing my home and those sorts of things. We’re allowed to bring up to 85 pounds, and really it’s after you have deployed a few times, that you know what you want and what you need. The National Science Foundation does provide us with extreme cold weather gear, which we call ECW. So our boots and our parkas, and our overalls are all provided for us. And so you’re just bringing your work clothes and the things that you might want for your room.
Robert Osborne:
All right. What do you do for fun there? Is there a movie theater?
Yubecca Bragg:
No, but people do gather for movies in various lounges. Each dorm has a lounge, and the lounges have televisions. There is a library. We have a couple of gyms, an aerobic gym, and a weightlifting gym. And we have a recreational department that provides all kinds of entertainment and activities for us to participate in.
Robert Osborne:
So how does an operator start the day in Antarctica? What kind of flows do they typically treat?
Yubecca Bragg:
Well, we work a relatively traditional schedule. I go in around 6:30 before my morning safety meeting, check the plant, check the overnight flows, do a walk around, have our safety meeting, and then start with our daily labs, and proceed to continue doing monitoring and cleaning throughout the day. So we have two very distinct seasons. We have a winter season and a summer season. Our flows during the winter are reduced because our population is significantly smaller. During the summer, our flows typically start out at the beginning of the season around 25,000 gallons per day. And as we reach our population height, we get up to around 45,000 gallons per day. And this is when we have people returning from the field camps. We have vessel operations. So we have everyone in town, and that’s around the height of our average on our flow.
Robert Osborne:
Okay, interesting. What all wastewater is being received here? Is this everything from McMurdo Station, or what all pipes flow to this plant?
Yubecca Bragg:
Yeah, so it’s everything from the station, and it’s a gravity flow. We have one small lift station that services just a couple of buildings that can’t gravity flow in. And so that’s automated, and that just kicks in. The pipes coming to the plant are heat traced. So it is warmed coming in, and yeah, it has to be, especially during winter, otherwise our lines would freeze.
Robert Osborne:
Okay. Yeah. So this is the first key distinction between a conventional wastewater system in Antarctica. How is the heating done? Are these just heating elements along the length of the pipe?
Yubecca Bragg:
It’s a wire that runs along and it has lights to tell you on it that to indicate if it’s functioning, especially important during winter. And so when we’re coming in in the winter, we’re usually about 15 to 18 Celsius. And during the summer we’re coming in anywhere from around 18 to 24 degrees Celsius. We’re typically going out around 20 to 23 degrees Celsius with our effluent. And with our specific plant, everything has to be inside because it’s so cold, especially during the winter. So it’s all under one roof. It’s a quite large building, and we’re actually the warmest and the most humid place on the station. So we’re very popular. People like to come down and visit.
We do provide a lot of tours. It’s very popular. We typically have around 200 folks a year that come through for our tours. The most awe moment is when we get to the biosolids, and they see the germination of tomato plants. Being in Antarctica, we don’t have anything green growing. And so it’s just very exciting for them to come down and see the tomatoes growing in the biosolids. There are tomato seeds in the biosolids that make it all the way to the plant and then germinate. We have a belt filter press. And so anytime that we do a pressing, we collect them in cardboard boxes that are lined, and then they are sent back to the United States annually on the vessel.
Robert Osborne:
A key question I had about the collection pipes. So if you can see the pipes, are they in a tunnel underground, or are these above-ground collection pipes?
Yubecca Bragg:
Some are buried in ice accumulation underneath some of the buildings, but again, heat traced, but most of them are on stanchions outside and you can see them. And that goes back to that heat trace where you have a light. So you’ll be able to tell if you have a fault in that heat trace, which would cause a blockage. As it comes in, like I said, almost all of it is gravity fed and it comes in, we go through a macerator, we have two muffin monsters, and then into an open Parshall Flume where we’re measuring. From there, we have a bar screen and then in the splitter box. So after the splitter box, it goes into whichever trains we have online into the anoxic zone. It slots over into the aeration basin. And then as it goes down the treatment train, we have a Chronicle clarifier at the end, we have a mixed liquor return halfway down, and then a return activated sludge from the clarifier, both of those, going back to the anoxic zone.
Again, with that being the MLE design of the plant, we are able to have fantastic nutrient removal with a small footprint. From the clarifier, it goes downstairs to the UV treatment. And then again measured, and then out to McMurdo Sound.
Historically, one of our biggest challenges is hydraulic bush. We are mostly shift work. So we have people doing a lot of things at the same time. So people are showering at the same time, they’re getting up at the same time. And so we have to modify our flows based on that. And that’s all manual. We are not a fully automated system. I think the biggest challenge I had was with foam. We had a lot of foaming issues, which is a common occurrence in plant. So come to find out, we didn’t have any grease interceptors in our galley. And so we worked with facilities and we were able to install some grease interceptors. And that just was a game changer. Prior to that, we had been vacuuming off the foam and putting it into our digesters. We had no way to just get it out of the system. So we were recycling it, the reduction was amazing once we put those interceptors in place, and we were able to see positive results within the year.
Robert Osborne:
This is going to be outside of our main scope. But I am curious where the drinking water comes from. Obviously we’re producing waste water. Where does drinking water come from?
Yubecca Bragg:
That is a good question. We have reverse osmosis, a heated well that brings up the water and pumps it to the plant. So the water plant is combined with the power plants. So it’s a pretty interesting series of tanks. And we have a saltwater tank that comes into, and then freshwater tanks that we hold storage for the station. And then also for fire suppression,
Robert Osborne:
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention all the excellent research at the station, what they are doing there is unique. And at least for some of us, hidden and out of plain sight. So to help us understand the bigger picture, we asked Sarah.
Sarah Eckart:
So my name is Sarah Echart, I am a communications specialist with the NSF Office of Polar Programs. We are celebrating 65 years of scientific discovery in Antarctica this year. And what most people don’t realize is that every single discipline of science, I say every single, there’s probably one that’s not, does get studied in Antarctica. So we’ve got astronomy and astrophysics. We’ve got Marine biology, chemistry, paleontology, because there are fossils that are found in Antarctica, zoology, everything like that gets studied in Antarctica.
And we are constantly driving innovation around different technologies because of the extreme environments that our researchers face in Antarctica. I know Becc just talked about some of the things that have had to be done to the treatment plant because of temperatures and conditions that we have. And so we have folks from around the country and around the world testing different underwater vehicles and different types of ways to power tools from just the low levels of heat that come off of a volcano in Antarctica. So, I mean, there is so much going on in Antarctica that most people don’t realize, and we are so lucky to be able to support those scientists through our role with the NSF and the US Antarctic Program.
Robert Osborne:
It’s pretty unique that we have this agreement in place for Antarctica.
Sarah Eckart:
The Antarctic Treaty was signed on December 1st, 1959. And it started with 12 countries that really identified the continent as a space for peaceful, scientific exploration and international collaboration. Right now, there are dozens of countries that have permanent stations, temporary stations, and who are supportive of the Antarctic Treaty globally. So we are very happy to have that role in the international scientific community, and to be able to protect this space, this pristine continent, as best as we can for science and for exploration.
Robert Osborne:
Special thanks to Yubecca and Sarah for joining us. It’s nice to know even at the bottom of the earth, wastewater still flows by gravity, wastewater equipment, just like ours, treats wastewater. And most importantly, excellent operators like Yubecca make it all work together. Thanks for listening to The Outfall. We aim to bring unique and fun back stories of our larger water world. Just like this episode, help us by sharing this episode with friends. Until next time.
