How many person-hours/week are required to operate the sewage system?

Answer 1

An average system has remarkably few operators, since the system itself is little more than a series of tanks.

The Truckee Meadows water authority where I live (see link) treats about 30-40 million gallons per day, and serves the city of Reno (~200,000 people). See link for schematics, operating data etc. The budget for salaries and benefits is only $4.5 million. You figure about a third of that is management, so the operators are about $3 million. Since it takes four shifts to kee a plant going 24 hours a day seven days per week, that is about $750,000 per year for each shift. That's only about eight operations people per shift, since salary plus benefits for city workers tend to be quite high.

For the sake of argument, lets say that this 40 million gallon per day facility requires only about 1350 operator hours per week.

I administered a small plant about 20 years ago, serving a town of about 20,000 people. The thing required two people per shift, plus the occasional mechanical contractor.

Sewage plants are dead-easy things to keep going. The personnel requirements do not go up substantially as you increase the size, either. I would be surprised if there was any significant increase in manpower for a plant serving a mega-metropolis.

Answer 2

I would think it would largely depend on the size of the facility and city/town.