Independent wastewater advice for food & beverage plants
Define the problem before you buy the solution. Independent, fixed-price wastewater problem definition for food and beverage facilities, starting with a free one-hour call.
Don't waste time and money on treatment systems you don't need and can't afford to purchase, operate, or maintain.
Who it's for
We work with owners, plant managers, EHS managers, and capital project teams at food and beverage facilities. Call us when something has changed, or is about to, and you need to know what it means before spending money.
Your discharge bills are growing faster than production and you're not sure why, or what it's worth to fix.
A permit renewal, new local limits, or a revised sewer use ordinance is coming and you need to know if you can meet it.
You've received a notice of violation, or the city's treatment plant (POTW) is pushing for pretreatment.
New lines, new products, or higher volumes will change your flows and loads, and your existing system may not keep up.
Existing pretreatment can't hit its targets, or chemical, sludge hauling, and labor costs are out of control.
A vendor or engineer has quoted a system and you want to know whether it's the right size, or the right answer at all.
Wastewater liabilities and upgrade costs belong in the due diligence, not in the surprises after closing.
Corporate sustainability targets call for less water use, less discharge, or reuse, and you need a realistic plan.
Typical facilities:
Independent advice
Much of the advice in this industry comes from people who profit from what you buy. Ours doesn't. We're paid for problem definition, so our only incentive is to get it right.
We don't manufacture, distribute, or represent any treatment equipment or chemicals.
We accept nothing from vendors, contractors, or engineering firms we recommend or shortlist.
We don't design or build the solution, so a smaller answer, like waste reduction instead of new treatment, is a good outcome for us too.
How it works
This is front-end work, sometimes called FEL-0: defining the problem before an engineer is hired to design the solution.
Sewer bills, production records, permits, and existing equipment. No one knows your facility better than you, and our free checklist shows what's useful.
Start the free checklist
Flow and mass balances, loads per unit of production, benchmarks from comparable plants, and targeted sampling where the data is thin. Every assumption is documented so you can challenge it.
Engineers design to the basis you give them. We make sure it reflects your real discharge, so your engineer starts from verified design criteria and you pay for design, not discovery.
Problem Definition covers steps 1 and 2. The Feasibility Study adds step 3.
The result is a basis of design: the flows, loads, and limits any solution has to meet.
What we often find
A few patterns we see again and again at food and beverage plants. Catching them before design starts is what keeps a $1M+ project from solving the wrong problem.
Treatment sized from a grab sample taken during sanitation, not a typical production day.
Caustic and acid from CIP hit treatment all at once because there's no equalization.
Systems designed around production forecasts that never arrived, and now cost too much to run.
Lost whey, syrup, or blood is often the cheapest BOD reduction there is: stop losing it.
Cutting water without cutting load concentrates the waste, and surcharges can go up, not down.
Pricing
Pretreatment systems commonly run $1M to $5M or more. Getting the problem right costs a small fraction of that, and it decides whether the rest is money well spent.
Start here
A free hour on your facility and needs. Then hourly help, like a vendor proposal review or city meeting prep.
Typically 4–6 weeks
A defensible basis of design: the current and projected flows, loads, and limits any solution has to meet.
You receive:
Typically 8–12 weeks
Everything in Problem Definition, plus a recommended path forward and what you need to hire an engineer.
Everything in Problem Definition, plus:
Add to either study: Existing System Assessment, +$10,000. We evaluate your current water and wastewater equipment: what it was designed for, how it's performing, and how much capacity is left for your current and projected loads.
All pricing is in USD.
Free tool
The Facility Data Checklist is the same list we use in step 1. Fill it in online to see what you already have, what's missing, and how ready you are, before you spend anything.
FAQ
Problem Definition: typically 4 to 6 weeks from kickoff. Feasibility Study: typically 8 to 12 weeks. We can usually start within two weeks of a signed agreement.
Those timelines assume your existing data is usable. If a gap needs new composite sampling, that adds time, and we'll tell you early and adjust the schedule together.
Plan on one point of contact who can pull records and answer questions, a kickoff meeting, a site visit, and a review meeting at the end. Most of the time goes into gathering the data on the checklist.
Every project is led by a licensed professional engineer* with more than 10 years of food and beverage wastewater experience at consulting and engineering firms. The engineer you meet on the intro call leads your project from kickoff to the final review.
Our work is written to be handed to an engineer: documented data sources, stated assumptions, and a basis of design they can verify instead of rediscover. Your engineer of record still owns the final design, but they start from verified criteria, not a blank page.
Then the study did its job. A smaller answer, like waste reduction or getting more out of the system you have, is a good outcome for us too, because we don't sell or build systems. Spending $25,000 to $47,500 to avoid a $1M+ mistake is money well spent.
The items on our Facility Data Checklist, as far as you have them. Missing data is normal. Closing those gaps is what step 2 is for.
No. We define the problem and prepare you to hire the right engineering and construction firms. Staying out of design and construction is what keeps our advice independent.
Fixed-price studies: 50% at kickoff and 50% on delivery of the final report, net 30.
Hourly advisory: $225/hr after the free first hour, billed monthly, net 30.
Fixed-price studies include one site visit, with up to $2,000 in travel expenses covered by the price. Any expenses beyond that are billed at cost with no markup. Additional visits are billed at the hourly rate plus travel at cost.
We'll flag it as soon as we see it. Additional work is priced in writing, hourly or as a fixed add-on, and only starts once you approve it.
Yes. Your production and discharge data are used only for your project.
In one free hour, we'll tell you what we'd look at first.
