By OLIVIA BERGMEIER and NATE KING
Salina Post
Cathy Rider spreads a positive message by actively participating in the betterment of her local community. Many resilient heroes work diligently behind the scenes, shoulder to shoulder with family members, neighbors and friends.
Citizens benefit from the countless hours these community champions spend on tasks like garbage disposal, farming, volunteering and social work.
As we embark on this mission to thank the unthanked, we invite you to open your hearts and minds to the incredible stories of these unsung heroes.
Cathy Rider
In the 30 years she has worked for the city, Cathy Rider, a chemist at the Salina Wastewater Plant, witnessed wastewater management adapt as new challenges would flow into the facility and eventually her lab.
Rider samples the wastewater treatment process each day, testing every step before clearing it for discharge into the Smoky Hill River.
"I like the different tests and the variety," Rider said. "I might do the same test every day but it is never the same results every single day."
Rider, a Salina native and graduate of Salina South, attended Marymount College, where she majored in chemistry and minored in biology.
"I didn't quite graduate from Marymount at first because I thought about changing my major," Rider said. "So I started working at Wilson Company. They were a commercial lab 40 years ago."
Rider worked in the commercial setting for a decade before returning to Marymount to complete her degree.
“I was in the final graduating class at Marymount," Rider said.
After achieving her degree, Rider began working for the City in 1993, which was upgrading its wastewater treatment plant for new types of contaminant removal.
When Rider started in the plant’s chemistry lab, they had just finished upgrading the plant to remove ammonia.
Ammonia is a common byproduct of organic material breaking down, which often ends up at the wastewater treatment facility due to sewage, agricultural operations or other environmental factors.
“We are due for another upgrade to eliminate nitrogen and phosphorus in our liquids,” Rider said. “The big push right now is for all Kansas wastewater plants to upgrade to biological nutrient removal.”
Biological nutrients are organic compounds that include nitrogen and phosphorus — removing them from wastewater keeps aquatic ecosystems healthy and helps prevent toxic algal blooms.
Rider’s role in the wastewater treatment process
Every day, Rider samples the wastewater through specialized sampling sites for various steps in the treatment process. She samples solid and liquid waste to test for PH levels, treatment effectiveness and unusual contaminants.
Wastewater treatment begins when raw sewage and storm drain run-off reaches the facility. According to Rider, it starts with clarifiers, a type of filtration that uses gravity to separate most solid wastes. Rider often calls the solid waste “sludge.”
After two clarification processes, the facility separates the sludge from the liquid waste for processing. The liquids undergo multiple disinfection steps while the system sends solids to digesters for further processing.
Digesters break down solid waste in a process similar to composting. A team of tiny organisms, often called microbes, biologically process the waste while plant staff monitor the digester tank’s temperature and other conditions.
Rider admitted that the samples from this process often smelled and looked foul, but she used to work with more dangerous samples for chemical analysis.
“I worked on EPA stuff, and oh my gosh, those samples are nasty and radioactive and full of tar and of who knows what else,” Rider said. “So when I got here, I said, ‘Well, this isn't too bad.’ Once you get over the initial smell, I look at it like it's just another sample.”
Protective equipment and gloves also help with the smelly sampling process.
“It didn’t take me long to get over it,” Rider said.
Some of the tests Rider uses to analyze the wastewater treatment process are quick, only taking one or two hours to complete. Others can take an entire workday to complete, like titration tests.
Titration is a chemistry technique to find how much of a compound is dissolved in a liquid. Rider said she often uses this technique to analyze PH levels in the waste solids during treatment.
“You have to run an alkalinity test, which involves titrating the sample to get the alkalinity result,” Rider said. “Then, on another part of the sample, you have to run an acidity test and get that result.”
Once she finishes the test, Rider records the results and analyzes them. If she finds anything off in her analysis, she informs the plant’s engineers so they can adjust the digesters accordingly.
Rider said it’s essential to test the solid waste for dangerous acidity or alkalinity levels since local farmers use the processed sludge for fertilizer. The Salina wastewater facility has provided this sludge to farmers for the past three decades.
“The fields like the nitrogen mostly,” Rider said. “We have to sample what’s going into the field as well as the fields themselves to make sure once they apply it, they can put crops on it.”
Initially, Rider aimed to work in the medical field with her chemistry degree. After she discovered the variety of jobs in the lab industry, she decided to pursue a career in environmental chemistry.
“I didn't care for the body parts or the medical side of things,” Rider said.
Rider said the chemistry field spans multiple industries outside medicine and environmental studies, including food, cosmetics and agricultural careers.
Just a few years after Rider started her career at the wastewater plant, Martha Tasker, the City of Salina utilities director, joined the team and continues working with Rider today.
“Rider is very, very familiar with every process at the field facility and all of the federal and state requirements, and she completes our monitoring reports,” Tasker said.
Tasker said the facility sends these meticulous reports to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for approval.
“Any work Cathy does is very well done and does not require checking. She is thorough and does an excellent job at everything,” Tasker said. “If I could clone Cathy twice, maybe three times, I'd love to do it, but she won't let me.”