Water Programs reaches million-manual milestone

Bestselling books aren’t always works of fiction, self-help guides or scintillating exposés. The surprise bestselling books of the University may be the training manuals of the Sacramento State Office of Water Programs, which have sold one million copies to date.

“This shows that the University has a good civil engineering program,” says emeritus civil engineering professor Ken Kerri, who oversaw the creation of the office’s first manual in 1972. The manuals are typically used to train operators of wastewater treatment facilities.

The Office of Water Programs, a center affiliated with the Department of Civil Engineering, was established in 1972 to provide training opportunities for operators in the field of water treatment and distribution, and wastewater collection, treatment and reuse. The office was asked by wastewater treatment operators to create a guide to train their own employees.

“The operators from Sacramento County said, ‘We need a course to help us do our job,’” says Kerri, who eventually spearheaded efforts to create the manual with experts from the County and the State Water Resource Control Board.

“At the time when the Clean Water Act first provided money to build new wastewater treatment facilities in the ’70s, there were no resources available to train the operators,” says Kurt Ohlinger, associate director of Water Programs. “We secured grant funding from the EPA to develop a training manual to satisfy the need for operators.”

The office’s first manual, Operation of Wastewater Treatment Plants, contains chapters written by different wastewater treatment specialists that explain basic information about the industry: why wastes should be treated, what treatment operators do, and information about the different sections of a wastewater facility.

“It’s important to inform the trainees that they are treating water to protect public health and the environment, and tell them why these jobs are highly critical,” Ohlinger says.

The office has now developed 21 manuals and several videos—50,000 of which are sold each year. “I go to a lot of conferences, meetings, and work very closely with the operators in the field to find out what the current technology and regulations are, to make the sure the manuals are always current,” says Kerri, who now oversees the production of the majority of the manuals and videos.

The office also maintains a distance-learning certification course that enrolls 14,000 students per year, allowing them to work in the industry or renew their operator licenses.

Ohlinger says the office uses revenue from its courses and manuals to fund its operations, making the office entirely self-supporting. “It’s a success story that not many people on the campus know about,” he says.

— Jaclyn Schultz