VIDEO: The Municipal Groover Cleaner Rears its Head, Part One
City of Salida finance director Jan Schmidt announced to a surprised audience at the December 3 City Council meeting that half the cost of a proposed $101,000 City septic dump station — slated for a location in front of the new U. S. Forest Service building — is actually allocated for an “automatic groover cleaner”.
A $50,000 “automatic groover cleaner”… in other words.
One minute video:
That is the first we, the uninitiated citizens of Salida who were seated in the audience, had heard about the City’s intention to install an automatic groover cleaner.
What is an automatic groover cleaner? I didn’t know, but figured Google would know. Google wasn’t much help, except for one reference to “groover” indicating that “groover” is a slang term used by many river runners for the portable toilet that accompanies them on their overnight rafting trips.
So my guess is that maybe half the audience, and at least half the City Council, had no idea what a groover cleaner was, much less an “automatic groover cleaner”.
I called the Salida Wastewater Treatment Plant, and spoke to manager Randy Sack. I wanted to know what a groover cleaner was, and then what an automatic groover cleaner was.
Mr. Sack first explained that the term “groover” originated from the groove that one would develop on their behind from sitting on the G.I. cans — the old make-shift toilets.
One mystery solved.
Mr. Sack then explained that, as a service to the rafting community, City employees manually clean the groovers at the Wastewater Plant, for a nominal fee of $8. The rafters leave the used groovers there for cleaning, and then pick them up the next day, clean as a whistle.
Mr. Sack went on to say that it was a very messy (and less than healthy?) procedure for employees to manually clean the groovers, so he was very thankful that the City was installing an automatic groover cleaner. He thought it should be located off Cleora Road in front of the U.S. Forest Service building, and alongside the dump station and the potable water station.
I then asked about the automatic groover cleaner. Mr. Sack said that it is a machine which cleans and sanitizes the groover placed inside the machine. Sounded pretty cool to me.
I then spent a good amount of time trying to track down the manufacturer of the automatic groover cleaner, via the internet and phone. Apparently there are no automatic groover cleaning machines — no one seemed to know the proper name — in Chaffee County, or anywhere close by. I also found out that in Buena Vista — the home of many of Colorado’s largest rafting companies — the Sanitation Department does not clean groovers for the rafters, and many of the rafting companies clean their own groovers. One company knew of an automatic groover cleaner in Riggins, Idaho, at a Chevron station, so I tried to track that down.
Voila, a rafting company in Idaho revealed that the correct brand name for the automatic groover cleaner is “SCAT Machine”. Another mystery solved.
Now if Jan Schmidt had just called the automatic groover cleaner by its real name and not used river runner slang, it would have saved me a morning of research. And if Jan Schmidt had itemized the SCAT Machine in the budget — instead of revealing its presence (as half the cost of the dump station) moments before the budget was passed — we could have had this discussion months ago.
But here we are. And what about that $50,000 SCAT Machine?
