LORAIN – Many Americans take clean water for granted, but after 31 years of helping to provide it, Dan McGannon knows better.

Four months after he was hired in the wake of a water contamination screw-up, McGannon, Lorain’s water purification plant superintendent, is implementing an ambitious agenda to keep clean water flowing to residents.

Since he began work April 18, McGannon has had sediment, known as sludge, trucked to a landfill rather than letting it flow to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, where it clogged up filters. He plans to switch to liquid chlorine to treat water, which is safer than hydrogen chloride, and eventually switch to plastic pipes, which last longer than iron ones.

“It’s not an art. It’s a science,” McGannon said Thursday about the purification process. “Back in the old days it was an art, but today it’s a science. Everything we do from now on will be based on science.”

McGannon’s hiring was prompted by workers erroneously reading dosage rates on a pump leading to a chemical underfeed in the purification process, causing high turbidity, or cloudiness, in water on April 9 and 10, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. City officials said the water was flushed into sewers as a precautionary measure and never reached the public.

However, workers at the plant failed to promptly notify the EPA. James Miller, the acting assistant water plant superintendent, and Mark Petrie, lead operator for purification, both quit under pressure. McGannon, who is a Class 4 plant operator, a certification from the Ohio EPA that is hard to come by, was then hired.

Utilities Director Corey Timko, who hired McGannon, praised his communication and management skills in a July 9 interview.

“The employees are going to like that a whole bunch and you’re going to get buy-in,” Timko said. “We’re trying to make a cultural shift in the way things are managed down there.”

McGannon said the screw-up has led to more EPA scrutiny including a surprise inspection, which he is fine with.

“Our water is so clean now that it’s unbelievable and I think everybody that works here is afraid for it to be anything other than that,” he said. “Surprise inspections tell them (EPA inspectors) two things: whether you’re doing you’re job or not.”

The hiring was a homecoming for McGannon, 50, a Lorain resident who began his career in 1980 working at the plant, which can process up to 17.2 million gallons of water daily and averages about 13.7 million gallons processed daily. McGannon worked at the plant at 1106 W. First St. until 1991, when he was hired at the water plant in Berea.

The Lorain plant, which dates back to 1906 and has operated continuously since 1954, serves about 30,000 customers. It had some $12.4 million in renovations completed in 1999.

McGannon is hoping to pour more money into new equipment when city taxpayers can afford it – like an approximately $250,000 centrifuge to filter water out of the sludge.

The sludge hauling costs about $60,000 annually. Sludge bags, about 20 feet wide and 100 to 150 feet long, lie outside the plant.

“There’s a lot to do here,” McGannon said. “I’ve got a good crew and everybody seems positive about making some changes.”

Contact Evan Goodenow at 329-7129 or egoodenow@chroniclet.com.