Submitted by Linda L Schick, PQE, Fairhaven Sewer Superintendent
We are living through unprecedented times that no one can truly understand.
The country has essentially shut down, people are out of work, children are not going to school, and we look at each other and ourselves, wondering if we are carrying or catching a virus that can kill our own family members, friends or strangers. A new world of one way grocery aisles, early senior shopping, and banks welcoming customers with masks on, has us all wondering, praying and hoping that somehow life will go back to what it was before, when we could hug our friends, and smile at a stranger in passing.
When people take a minute to be thankful, they rightly praise their front line workers: police, fire, medical, grocery workers, truckers…all of whom are keeping us safe and fed for which we are ALL thankful.
While these front line workers are performing their tasks tirelessly, they are at least recognized for their contribution, and can feel proud that they are serving for the greater good.
I want to take a minute to thank the people that are not front line workers, but BACK end workers: the employees of the Fairhaven wastewater department.
For these employees there is no praise or recognition, yet they come to work every day, and put their lives on the line so that their customers can flush their toilets, wash their clothes, take a shower, without having the additional worry of flooding their homes with their own waste. That waste makes its way to the pump stations and treatment plants of Fairhaven where it is silently, fearlessly treated by wastewater operators.
These operators are pulling “flushable” wipes from their clogged pipes, running emergency generators when the power goes out, monitoring all aspects of the system that allows the by-products of a good meal to become clean water to return to our beloved harbor.
These people are the essential back end workers…the ones who take something that not many people will work with, that gives them the potential to become ill from not only COVID-19, but hepatitis, typhoid, paratyphoid, bacillary dysentery, gastroenteritis, and cholera…every day!
Many of these illnesses have similar symptoms, which vary in severity. Most infect the stomach and intestinal tract and can cause symptoms like headache, diarrhea (sometimes with blood), abdominal cramps, fever, nausea, and vomiting. These public servants deal with these issues daily, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the greater good, but as back end workers, they do not receive praise, and are frequently treated with ire when something does go wrong in the system, causing a backup in a home or business, that they have arrived at to resolve.
I have had the honor of knowing the wastewater operators of Fairhaven for 33 years of my life. I have seen them do the dirty, nasty, gagging jobs that no one else would think of doing, without giving it a second thought. I have watched them when they are listening to everyone praise the front line workers, who 100% deserve the praise, and wonder if anyone even knows they exist.
There is no pizza, or cookies, or thank-you posters from the school children. They don’t receive awards, or public recognition, but every day they come in and do it all again. They know that they are true environmental protection warriors working the back end so that the front end can do their jobs and go home and shower, empty their bladders and bowels, wash their clothes, or cook a meal without ever giving a second thought to where all that waste goes.
I just want to personally, from the bottom of my heart, THANK all of the employees of the Fairhaven Wastewater Department…the back end workers that keep us all safe, at their own peril, all day, and every day.
I also want to thank Charlie Murphy, the Rotary through Pattie Pacella, and Donna Bosworth for supplying us with fabric masks so that they could continue to work in public with some additional protection from their newest but definitely not last, enemy to their health.
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