President's Message

Bruce Bartel
Green Bay, Wisconsin
April 2010

Being the baseball fan that I am, I know that the real beginning of spring is when the Major League Spring Training Camps open. The camps have been opened since the end of February and the regular season is about to begin. Spring is here! In our business, spring means times will be getting much busier - if that is possible. It is time to deal with biosolids inventories that have increased during the winter months and the increased flows that come with the spring thaw. Busier times are certainly here.

The program for the WWOA Annual Conference at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells has been pretty much set. Randy Thater and the Technical Committee (sounds like a rock band to me) met in February to review the presentations that were submitted. There were 70+ presentations submitted to fill the 35 to 40 available spots for the conference. It was not an easy task to choose the presentations and unfortunately some interesting presentations were not selected because of the space not being available. This is a nice problem to have and leads to what should be another interesting and beneficial conference. My hat is off to Randy for putting this all together. He is one of the most organized people that I know and his efforts will show at conference time.

I had the opportunity to attend several training sessions in February – two WWOA Regional Meetings and the Government Affairs Seminar. It continues to amaze me the quality of the Regional Meetings that the Regional Officers are able to put together. These folks do a great job in putting their agendas together. With everyone’s budget getting tighter and tighter, the Regional Meetings offer excellent training opportunities for a nominal fee. For those of you that are unable to attend the more costly training opportunities, please remember your local meetings as a great chance to receive quality training at a very reasonable cost.

The Government Affairs Seminar offered very timely and pertinent information. Congratulations to the committee members that put together this training session. The big topic of the day was the upcoming new phosphorus limits that are coming our way. The seminar shed a lot of light on what those new limits will be and cost that will be associated with meeting these limits. Hopefully you are all aware of the proposed limits that are coming, if not, you need to do whatever you can to get yourself and your community informed of the limits.

I would also like to recognize those that worked to put together the Spring Biosolids Symposium. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the symposium, but from what I hear from those that did, it was another quality program. In closing, I would like to share a passage that a friend of mine shared with me a few weeks ago. He was telling me about a seafood place he has been to and the following is their motto. It proved to be a helpful reminder to me and will hopefully be the same for you.

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearances, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our ATTITUDES.” Chuck Swindall

Until next time – take care.