In life, we have to take care of ourselves physically and mentally. If we are exercising and eating right, it helps keep us physically fit which also helps us stay mentally fit, because we are not worrying about getting sick. Same goes for the distribution and collection systems for our water/wastewater. We must keep them fit (in good working condition). If we don’t then our systems sooner or later begin to fail. This creates headaches and other pains we must deal with down the road. Issues like water line breaks, sanitary sewer overflows, and low water pressure while fighting a fire.
It is important to have a plan. To develop a maintenance schedule, provide the appropriate equipment, and to train workers to do the job correctly and safely. Part of the problem with our infrastructures today is we have not been vigilant and put forth a constant effort to keep our systems up-to-date and in good working order. It is easy to complete a project or reach a goal and then back off and take a breather. When we spend months or years focused on completing a task, it is only natural to want to relax a bit. But relaxing puts that next deadline or goal in jeopardy. Pretty soon we are operating in “catch up” mode and instead of spending our time keeping our systems maintained and working smoothly, we are simply putting band-aids on little hurts and not curing the debilitating disease that is beginning to consume our systems.
Water/Wastewater jobs are challenging, and the work never ends. There just isn’t time to take it easy. Emergencies are inevitable, there will be ruptured water lines and sewer backups. Best case scenario, you get a little behind in your schedule, worst case, you get caught up in a perpetual game of chasing problems and never get back into a proactive mode. Face it, there will never be time to kick back and relax without consequences. But with a functioning maintenance system in place, the difficult days will be the ones where you hope you can only stay on track, and the easy days are ones you may have a chance to make some progress. Take advantage of those days and persevere on, procrastination never fixed anything. Make the decision to start working on consistently maintaining and updating your water/wastewater systems.
