Today’s Excellence Behind The Scenes profile is of Dave Brazil. Dave is a Mechanic Operator at our Water Treatment Plant. He has worked for the City for over 19 years. Dave is married to his wife of 20 years, Patricia and they have two daughters: Clair, 14, and Sophie, 11. In addition to coaching his girls’ fast pitch softball teams, Dave is an avid outdoorsman and counts hunting, archery, and boating among his many outdoor interests. Dave said that one of his most interesting experiences in life was the the opportunity he had a few years ago to go wild boar hunting in Germany with a group of German hunters.
The four photos of Dave are a good representation of his job at the Water Treatment Plant. Dave manages our laboratory functions. He makes sure that the water we send to homes and business in Eden Prairie is safe to drink and free of contamination. Dave maintains equipment and mechanical functions at the plant. It’s up to him and his work group to diagnose and fix mechanical problems whenever and wherever they occur. We can’t shut down the Water Plant. It has to work all the time. It’s part of Dave’s job to make sure of that. Dave also helps to keep an accurate log of maintenance and lab records. We log over 70 samples each month, as well as keeping track of when we’ve made repairs to equipment. The Minnesota Department of Health keeps close tabs on that sort of thing. The final photo shows Dave next to a display that he designed to show people how a sand filter works at a water treatment plant. I must admit that I did not fully understand how these filters worked until I saw Dave’s display. Dave enjoys educating people about water. He is one of our chief tour guides at the plant. In fact, I snapped that photo of Dave next to the display about ten minutes after he gave a group of Edina 4th graders a tour of the plant and a talk about water conservation.
I spent some time with Dave at the Water Plant yesterday in preparation to write this blog posting. Dave is proud of the plant and how it functions. He is an inventive guy. He showed me two examples ( increased support for the lime storage bin shakers and realigning the pipes that work the lime sludge presses) of how he developed solutions to problems that were occurring with equipment that was designed to work in our plant, but wasn’t working just right. Dave figured out solutions, convinced his bosses they would work, and then involved his co-workers in building them (many times from scratch) and installing them.
I asked Dave how he got into this line of work. He said he has always been interested in the outdoors and water. He said he initially wanted to work for the DNR, but after he got his first job in the water business, he was hooked. Dave’s job is important. You’d notice if he didn’t do it right. Our City water plant is going to treat and distribute over 3 billion gallons of water this year. A reliable and ample supply of safe drinking water is a fact of life that we all take for granted in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. You couldn’t take it for granted if it weren’t for the work of people like Dave Brazil at our Water Treatment Plant.
