“Our goal is to make water pollution control as environmentally friendly as we can.”

WPCC Manager Steve Baytos

You can’t help but notice the excitement WPCC Manager Steve Baytos conveys when he talks about his new job at Avon Lake Municipal Utilities.

“The board’s five-year expansion plan for the Water Pollution Control Center has a very green feel about it. For example, we are looking into reusing the plant’s methane by-product as a fuel and recycling the residual sludge as a fertilizer. All the personnel are top notch. They really know their business,” said Steve.

Steve spent five years in the private sector as an environmental engineering consultant for Sanborn, Head & Associates, and as plant foreman for Clean Harbors Chemical and Hazardous Material Response Services. He served ten years in the public sector as a wastewater plant operator and, most recently, as Assistant Superintendent of Elyria’s Wastewater Pollution Control Plant, before starting in July at ALMU.

Steve has a BS Environmental Science from Youngstown State University. He has a Class IV Wastewater Operator License. Steve is an Operator Training Committee of Ohio trainer and has co-authored a presentation, “Recycled flows and how to treat them,” for a North Eastern Section meeting of the Ohio Water Environment Association.

Stephen Baytos IV lives in Elyria. His son, Stephen V, is a junior at Elyria High School. Daughter Sydney is an 8th grader at Northwood Middle School. Their mother, Debbie Baytos/Heck, teaches math at Elyria High.

Steve says his hobbies are “whatever the kids are into.” He played semi-pro football as offensive lineman for the North Coast Outlaws of Cleveland, and is a member of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc.), an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-l7th-century Europe.

Steve’s specialty is medieval fighting.