We recently attended the Fifth Annual Waste Treatment Symposium Sept. 15 and 16. The Symposium was held in Washington, PA at the family farm of Hapchuk, Inc. and at Hapchuk's Liquid Assets Disposal (L.A.D.) facility in Wheeling, WV.

Unlike previous symposia, which were held at hotels with a field trip to a treatment facility, Dave Hapchuk held all the classroom and vendor sessions right at his facility in Washington, PA. Dave has several large buildings that he emptied out to accomodate the approximately 135 contractors, engineers, and consultants from all over the world (yes...there was someone there from Guam!) All meals were served at Hapchuk's including the delicious Wednesday night dinner, complete with a band and 400 of Dave's friends to make the event more festive. Dave's staff was constantly making sure that everything ran smoothly. A very impressive operation indeed!

The classes were extremely informative on a variety of topics, including how to recover methane from a grease waste digestor, making grease a much more valuable asset. The trip to the L.A.D. treatment facility was fantastic. Dave opened the facility to the group, and 135 people climbed all over the equipment and talked with the many vendors who helped Dave and his partner Andy Kicinski set up this state-of-the-art plant. The advantage to networking with people that you don't compete with was never more evident. The value of this type of event is obvious, watching professionals in the field comparing notes on the various components of the L.A.D. facility.

Dave Hapchuk has significantly raised the symposium hosting bar, and future Waste Treatment Symposiums will certainly benefit from Dave's efforts this year. Thanks to the NAWT and Hapchuk, Inc. for a tremendously educational and valuable networking experience

In the first two installments on identity theft we talked about ATM's, reducing paper, computer scams. and computer "phishing". These are all very important things to be on guard about. But the bottom line is this: if someone has stolen your identity and starts to use your name to get credit, steal and otherwise ruin your good name, the place that this type of activity will show up first is your credit report.

Unless you subscribe to a service that constantly monitors activity on you credit report and flags unusual activity, you're on your own to monitor these reports.

You've probably seen the TV ads for services like FreeCreditReports.com. These companies will provide a free credit report, and will also try to sell you a credit report monitoring service. You don't have to get the service to get the free report, but you need to cancel the service within a very short time to avoid being automatically signed up for the monitoring service.

What the ads don't tell you is that each of the three national credit report firms (Transunion, Equifax, and Experian) are all required BY LAW to provide an annual credit report FOR FREE.  This means you are entitled to three free credit reports per year. This means that every four months you can monitor your credit report. If someone has stolen your identity and has started to ruin your good name, you'll know about it very fast.

You can get the reports at the following sites (you'll have to provide a credit card, but they won't charge anything unless you don't cancel the service):