C Factor—Kenneth Enlow

COVID-19: Treat It as Another Safety Program

Kenneth Enlow President, FWPCOA

Greetings, everyone. I hope you all are doing well.

There is no doubt that COVID-19 is affecting all parts of our lives, at work and at home. As we move forward through this year—and maybe even beyond—we are not

certain what the future holds. That being said, we will continue to provide the services essential to the health and well-being of the public we serve.

To ensure that we have a measure of protection during this time, we must be diligent in practicing universal controls to help prevent the spread of this virus. Wearing face masks, washing hands, maintaining social distancing, and frequent disinfection of our work spaces are all part of this.

Beyond all of this, we have an obligation to ensure that we are not unnecessarily exposing ourselves to COVID-19 when we are away from our jobs. As an essential service to the public, we must conduct ourselves off the job in a way that will help to prevent the spread of the virus on the job. Things like avoiding large groups and gatherings, wearing face coverings in public, and staying home on our days off—except for necessary visits to the store, doctor’s office, or for other essential needs—will help to keep all of us healthy.

Universal controls should not be a concept we are not familiar with. This is just another term to define measures put into place to protect people from hazards. We, as an industry, are very familiar with implementing safety procedures for the many hazards we face every day. We define ways to eliminate or minimize exposures, which we do through engineering controls or work environment changes to eliminate hazards. In cases where we cannot eliminate a hazard, we mitigate it through safety barriers or personal protective equipment (PPE).

The universal controls that have been prescribed to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus are essential the same type of safety precautions we would implement in our industry to help protect us from any other hazard.

Wearing PPE (like face masks), disinfecting surfaces to eliminate exposure, social distancing, reporting illnesses that are recognized symptoms of COVID-19, and staying home when you are sick are all part of a safety program.

Please keep all of this in mind as we move forward and work through this trying time. Remember that you have a choice to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

FWPCOA Training Update

As an association, FWPCOA’s primary purpose is to provide training to our members and the industry as a whole. We have faced many difficulties, resulting from the recent pandemic, getting classroom training going again. We had to cancel the spring and fall short schools due to the Indian River State Collage restricting campus activities. We hope to get our training programs out to our operators once again, but are moving cautiously as we monitor the phased openings to the public.

One of the hurdles we have to overcome is finding venues that can and will accommodate our training classes. We feel that phasing in classroom training with smaller groups in a controlled environment is one of the ways to get training back out to our members and the industry. We are looking to utilities to provide training rooms, and are also looking at other venues, like theaters, churches, hotel conference rooms, etc.

As an association, we understand the caution that some may have with the possible spread of COVID-19 and share their concerns. We believe the spread of the virus can be minimized through the application of universal controls. To that end, the FWPCOA board of directors voted to implement a COVID-19 guidance document.

Further, to ensure the safety of both students and instructors, we are also asking for everyone to submit a daily health check form when attend training or meetings.

The health check would be submitted on a daily basis when attending an event. Above all, if someone feels sick, they will be asked to stay home and call the training office to report the illness. We will refund tuition if someone is unable to attend due to an illness.

The FWPCOA is committed to our goal of training our members and the industry and will do what we can to safely resume training in the future.

In the meantime, and as always, our online Training Institute is up and running. I want to remind everyone again about our wastewater collection “C” online training course. This course has been newly revamped to include a manual developed by FWPCOA. The cost of the course is $275, which includes the newly developed manual and a membership in FWPCOA for a year.

You can access our online training by going to the FWPCOA website at www. fwpcoa.org and selecting the “Online Institute” button at the upper right-hand area of the home page to open the login page. You then scroll down to the bottom of this screen and click on “View Catalog” to open the catalog of the many training programs offered. Select your preferred

training program and register online to take the course.

That’s all I have for this C Factor. Everyone take care and, as usual, keep up the good work!