Go to the local waste water treatment ponds and collect buckets of sewage! Yippee!
Last Friday I went to "help" (I was mostly along for the pretty ride) Jon collect duckweed (the green plant that is floating on top of the ponds-- you didn't think that was something else did you?) for the project he is working on at school. They are doing an experiment to find out if duckweed can remove phosphorous and other nasty things from waste water. He needed about 75 gallons of waste water to take back to the lab. He thought that there would be a pump that he could use, but discovered much to his chagrin that he would have to bucket it out by hand! The water that goes into these ponds has already been treated a little, but is still really gross. Needless to say, I let him do all the dirty work.
I just enjoyed the view of the mountains!
I do have to say for being a waste water pond it sure was beautiful, and it didn't stink--just in case you wondered.
So, I've learned a lot in the past year about water treatment. It is actually really interesting, and I bet that most of you don't know where things go once you flush them down the toilet. And in all honesty I bet most of you don't care, but you should-- so keep reading.
Surprising, there is actually very little that is done to sewage. In most medium sized cities (big cities usually have money to buy fancy equipment) the sewage goes to tanks where stuff settles to the bottom, is filtered and chlorinated. Then it goes to big ponds, like the ones shown, where it moves VERY slowly from one pond to the next until it is dumped back into a river or stream. The UV rays from the sun kill a lot of the bacteria. EXCEPT, things like birth control and other medications (excreted by humans) which stay in the water and end up back in the rivers. They actually have been finding fish with three heads as a result of the birth control medications that are being excreted into the water! Jon's project is trying to find plants and other natural ways to clean the medications out of the water.
Okay, so that was probably A LOT more than you ever wanted to know about water treatment, but I think it is really important for people to know that when they flush things down the toilet that they don't just disappear. In all honesty, I think everyone should have to take a tour of their city's water treatment facility and landfill. I think it would make people realize that just because something is out of sight doesn't mean that it should be out of mind. Be careful with what you throw away, you never know when you might be seeing it again!
I can almost picture the look on your face right now. I think it might kind of look like this.
Last Friday I went to "help" (I was mostly along for the pretty ride) Jon collect duckweed (the green plant that is floating on top of the ponds-- you didn't think that was something else did you?) for the project he is working on at school. They are doing an experiment to find out if duckweed can remove phosphorous and other nasty things from waste water. He needed about 75 gallons of waste water to take back to the lab. He thought that there would be a pump that he could use, but discovered much to his chagrin that he would have to bucket it out by hand! The water that goes into these ponds has already been treated a little, but is still really gross. Needless to say, I let him do all the dirty work.
I just enjoyed the view of the mountains!
I do have to say for being a waste water pond it sure was beautiful, and it didn't stink--just in case you wondered.
So, I've learned a lot in the past year about water treatment. It is actually really interesting, and I bet that most of you don't know where things go once you flush them down the toilet. And in all honesty I bet most of you don't care, but you should-- so keep reading.
Surprising, there is actually very little that is done to sewage. In most medium sized cities (big cities usually have money to buy fancy equipment) the sewage goes to tanks where stuff settles to the bottom, is filtered and chlorinated. Then it goes to big ponds, like the ones shown, where it moves VERY slowly from one pond to the next until it is dumped back into a river or stream. The UV rays from the sun kill a lot of the bacteria. EXCEPT, things like birth control and other medications (excreted by humans) which stay in the water and end up back in the rivers. They actually have been finding fish with three heads as a result of the birth control medications that are being excreted into the water! Jon's project is trying to find plants and other natural ways to clean the medications out of the water.
Okay, so that was probably A LOT more than you ever wanted to know about water treatment, but I think it is really important for people to know that when they flush things down the toilet that they don't just disappear. In all honesty, I think everyone should have to take a tour of their city's water treatment facility and landfill. I think it would make people realize that just because something is out of sight doesn't mean that it should be out of mind. Be careful with what you throw away, you never know when you might be seeing it again!
I can almost picture the look on your face right now. I think it might kind of look like this.
2 comments:
Guess what? I think about water treatment a lot more than you'd imagine. When we moved down here we were initially drinking only bottled water because the water tastes nasty in comparison to the rocky mountain spring water up north. But that made me realize what a waste of plastic!! There is NO recycling plant here!! So we now have a water purifier of our own, and use it EVERYDAY. People tell us that our water tastes good all the time...and after tasting bad water, I agree. Oh, and I love Asher's face.
Thanks for the lesson! Learn something new everyday! That is so sad for those poor fish though. I hope Jon's project goes well.
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