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Laboratory

Welcome to the Fairmont Wastewater Treatment Plant Laboratory. It is considered the busiest room in City of Fairmont WWTP. It is here that all in-house laboratory experiments take place. The laboratory is completely furnished to provide the lab technician with all the tools to complete the required mission. A comprehensive Quality Assurance and Quality Control Program assures the enforcement community and well as the general public that the lab is being run in an efficient and compliant manner.

During WV DEP Laboratory Inspections, the Fairmont Lab consistently scores in the mid to high 90s on final evaluations. A record that shows the public that Fairmont is doing it right.

The WWTP lab takes pride in its record of compliance. Led by the efforts of Senior Lab Technician, Michael Tichnell, the lab is literally a 7 day job. As part of the Fairmont WWTP National Pollution Discharge Elimination System Permit (NPDES) the plant is required to perform certain test on the waters that enter and leave the plant.

Samples are collected in a series of sampler that automatically take periodic samples of the waste stream.

A total of 4 samplers collect samples from the head works of the plant (Influent), at the Primary Clarifier effluent, Secondary Clarifier effluent and at the Final Effluent (Chlorine Contact tank). They are tied in together and sample 100ml of water every 50,000 gallons of water that passes through the plant. The water is sampled for 24 hours, then is collected and brought to the lab to analyzed for a variety of parameters. Ammonia Nitrogen, Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and pH are just a few of the analyses that are performed.

The lab crew is available for contract sampling as well. Armed with a Sigma America Portable ProMax sampler, the City of Fairmont WWTP is capable and available for a variety of sampling situations. Several area landfills and industries utilize our lab crews to perform required waste stream self-monitoring.