Red Hook WatchIndependent Community Resource
Daily flow, temperature, pH, and solids from Red Hook's two wastewater treatment plants, extracted from monthly DEC NPDES Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMRs), overlaid with notices of violation, consent-order milestones, and other sewer-department documents.

WWTP sludge removal volume

Monthly gallons hauled from the WWTP, parsed from the Village's QuickBooks transaction report (account ES8130.43, exported 2026-03-20). The dashed red line is the budgeted routine baseline (26 hauls × 4,000 gal ÷ 12 months ≈ 8,667 gal/mo). Months materially above the line reflect emergency hauling or EQ-tank pump-downs — i.e. plant influent the treatment train couldn't process within capacity. Treat elevated bars as a plant-dysfunction indicator, not routine production.

Parsed 38 transactions: 34 with explicit gallons in memo; 1 rate-divided at $194/kgal; 1 flat-fee row(s) excluded; zero-amount/empty-memo rows (likely bill credits or pending invoices) flagged as unaccounted — true volume may be higher.
MonthGallons hauledvs budgettxnsunaccounted$ billed
2025-064,9800.6×1$1,610
2025-0732,0003.7×4$7,269
2025-0817,0002.0×4$4,626
2025-0915,0001.7×3$3,201
2025-1018,0002.1×2$4,399
2025-1125,0002.9×2$6,654
2025-1233,0003.8×4$10,005
2026-0127,5003.2×5$7,878
2026-0226,5003.1×3$7,415
2026-035,3200.6×2$1,280
2026-0443,5005.0×6$10,383
2026-0510,2501.2×2$2,187

Sludge tank operations & emergency hauls (Village WWTP)

Mixed Liquor Suspended Solids (MLSS) is the standing biomass in the aeration tank; Waste Activated Sludge (WAS) is how aggressively the operator is pulling biomass out. Together they describe how the operator is managing sludge inventory. Vertical red lines on both charts mark dates of emergency sludge hauls invoiced via QuickBooks; green dashed lines mark routinehauls. Only the in-house plant DMR form (Apr–Jul 2025) carried these fields; the contract-operator forms before April 2025 and the H2O Innovations forms after September 2025 omit them, so the chart goes dark exactly when emergencies escalated.

MLSS over time

WAS minutes per day

Reading the story.The Village WWTP form lists a target MLSS of 3,000 mg/L. From April through June 2025, MLSS climbed from ~500 mg/L to ~3,000 mg/L — biology was being grown — but WAS stayed at zero for nearly the entire quarter (no biomass was being wasted). When the operator finally ramped WAS to ~780 min/day starting July 1, MLSS briefly spiked to 4,200–5,080 mg/L (the red overload band) before the form changed and reporting stopped on Aug 1. Vertical red lines mark dates of emergency sludge hauls (per QuickBooks). The first emergency haul (June 26) falls just before the wasting ramp-up, suggesting the operator recognized biomass over-accumulation as the cause. After September 2025, MLSS / WAS reporting disappeared entirely, while emergency hauls continued at an elevated rate.

Note: the alternation between low (~900 mg/L) and target-range (~3,000 mg/L) MLSS values reflects real biological cycling, not extraction noise. Per the May 2025 Delaware Engineering report (wwtp::2053), the Purestream treatment unit cannot retain biomass above 35 gpm forward flow — storms or wet weather flush the biology out ("washout"). MLSS reported on 74 village days and WAS on 4 village days, all between April and July 2025. The DEC form template still has MLSS and WAS columns under H2O Innovations, but they’ve been left blank since August 2025.