On October 25, 2007, the North Shore Sanitary District (NSSD) hosted UDPREP's Brown Bag Briefing at their offices in Gurnee, IL.

NSSD General Manager Brian Dorn welcomed the group to the facility and introduced the main speaker, staff biologist Rob Flood.

Rob's presentation focused on the NSSD's monitoring efforts in 2004, 2005, and 2006. He noted that the district is still compiling the 2007 data, and they are looking forward to learning how the heavy rains may have impacted river conditions.

The presentation started with an overview of NSSD's service area and facilities. Rob explained the purposes of monitoring and how the goals of the national Clean Water Act influence the district's monitoring program. Rob described the study area and how protocols and indicies were developed in accordance with IEPA standards. He concluded with the data results for the three study sites over three years and discussed NSSD's analysis. Rob also presented data collected at nearby IEPA study sites, which are similar to the district's results.

Rob was joined by NSSD colleague Joe Robinson to field a wide variety of interesting questions from the audience. Meanwhile, participants had the opportunity to examine the tools used to collect macroinvertebrates and jars of samples that were passed around.

As the briefing concluded, Rob encouraged the group to visit the displays in the NSSD lobby. One display shows examples of untreated sludge, dried sludge, and treated sludge – which is super-heated to a glass-like state. Treated sludge is re-used as construction fill. The second display in the lobby is a tank of Des Plaines River fish swimming in treated effluent. The bottom the tank is layered with the glass-like treated sludge.

Click here to download the presentation.