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Rutland City’s Wastewater Treatment Department Chief Operator Bob Protivansky checks equipment during the course of his workday.

Rutland City’s Wastewater Treatment Department Chief Operator Bob Protivansky checks equipment during the course of his workday.

Eleven sets of hands. That’s how many it takes to keep Rutland City’s Wastewater Treatment Department functioning at its best, according to Chief Operator Bob Protivansky.

It’s a 24-hour operation and, as Protivansky explained, operators need to maintain facilities and equipment “in unison, like a Swiss watch, so everything works to make everything else work.”

But that all changed during the self-isolation period of the COVID-19 pandemic when those eleven dropped to, at most, two or three at a time.

At the center of the changes was Protivansky — making the decisions to protect himself and his family, protect his coworkers and their families, and keep the treatment plant functioning for all of Rutland City.

“The stresses were, at first, making the hard decisions to lock the place down.” Protivansky said. “Then it was sitting here with a couple guys trying to run a place that takes 11.”

The Wastewater Treatment Facility started implementing lockdown protocols roughly three weeks prior to the city itself — the full staff keeping their six-foot distance and working on independent tasks.

In those first weeks, Protivansky said he took care to ensure his staff had prepared their families with supplies if it came to the point where some staff would be forced to run the plant day in and day out.

“There’s only 11 people that work for the city that know how to run this place. Half of ’em go down (and) we’re in big trouble,” Protivansky said. “We bought some air mattresses and blankets and pillows. We thought, ‘Jeez, if we lose 8 out of 11, the other three will have to just live here until the other ones are well enough.”

Protivansky said his crew also brought all spare lab equipment into the treatment plant from the nearby testing facility for the required daily water monitoring work. If the lab went into quarantine, the team needed to be prepared.

“That was the biggest thing. Trying to keep the plant running to protect human health, and also comply with the state and the EPA as best we could with the circumstances,” Protivansky said.

Once self-isolation began, crew members worked in shifts of two or three per the city’s mandate and Protivansky had to adapt.

Though the light team did keep all the operators healthy — only one or two cases of COVID occurred in the department just recently — the shift was not without its issues.

With the large amount of Rutland citizens in their homes in the first months of the pandemic, Protivansky recalled a week where 27 pumps were plugged with wrongly-flushed disinfectant wipes and the staff of two was forced to call in help.

“To unplug a pump, you’re sticking your arm in and then you’re pulling stuff out. At that point, we didn’t know if this could be transmitted through wastewater. The guys were doing their job amazingly given the fact they didn’t know if they were putting themselves in harm’s way,” Protivansky said.

Keeping the plant working smoothly meant keeping Rutlanders safe and for Protivansky, that was the main priority.

Near the beginning of the pandemic, the plant even participated in wastewater testing that was meant to act as a first response for detecting the virus before an individual got sick.

Testing took place during a two-month free-trial period beginning April 20, 2020, through the Massachusetts-based company, Biobot.

Each result during that time came back as untraceable and the decision was made to stop testing as a result.

“Maybe it’d be worth doing (if cases rose). I’m sure it helped in New York City and maybe Burlington — in a bigger city. But getting, you know, eight cases a day out of 16,000 people, (results) weren’t really showing up,” Protivansky said.

In the time since the height of pandemic protocols, COVID wastewater testing, and limited staff, Protivansky said things have mostly gone back to normal — aside from the habit of keeping 6-feet apart.

And despite the gratitude Protivansky felt in being able to help his city during a crisis, he is incredibly glad things have calmed.

“There was running, running, running all day and putting in a lot of hours nobody knew about,” he said. “It’s kind of like my baby here. But it was hard. Being stressed out about my kids, my wife, my coworkers’ kids and wives. Everybody was emotional and worried about everything.”

And though keeping a positive attitude amid such stress was the most difficult part for him, Protivansky said what lifted him up in these times was the strength of his team and the kindness of the people he encountered.

“It was seeing the good in everybody,” he said. “Everybody was in the same boat. There’s nothing anybody could do to change it, so they had to deal with it. And everybody just did.”

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