Wastewater

A water and wastewater engineering expert witness may be appropriate when the disputed issue involves the design or capacity of treatment processes, pumping systems, collection infrastructure, hydraulic loading, treatment equipment, or the interaction between water and wastewater systems. On this page, that term is best treated as a wastewater-specific engineering application rather than as a substitute for broader Environmental Engineering expertise.

Industrial discharges can differ substantially from ordinary domestic sewage in flow, pollutant concentration, pH, temperature, chemical composition, or process characteristics. An expert may compare industrial-user records, sampling data, discharge timing, local limits, plant loading, and treatment response to determine whether a particular discharge is consistent with an alleged upset or performance problem. EPA's National Pretreatment Program is specifically intended to prevent industrial discharges from interfering with or passing through publicly owned treatment works.

Useful evidence may include flow and level trends, rainfall, pump status, alarms, bypass records, equipment failures, collection-system conditions, operator notes, laboratory results, and the timing of industrial or hauled-waste discharges. Comparing those records can help determine whether the event was driven by excessive hydraulic loading, equipment malfunction, a treatment-process disturbance, collection-system limitations, or a combination of factors.