Waste+Water+Treatment

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Recent: __Chicago Inaugurates Costly Plan to Replace Aged Water Mains __ __[|Water Rate in Small Town Has Residents Fuming] __ __‘Taking the Waste Out of Wastewater’ __ __[|**Water**-**Reuse Ideas Go Forward**, **Despite** '**Toilet to Tap**'**Concerns**] __

__[|From Sewage, Added Water for Drinking] __
__Slaking a Region's Thirst While Cleaning Its Beaches __

Once water is used, it contains pollutants that must be removed and treated before release. Historically, Americans counted on its streams, rivers, and even the ocean to dilute and carry away their waste. In the nineteenth century, Boston built the country’s first modern sewer system, which pumped sewage into Boston Harbor to drift out to sea. But by the twentieth century, dilution was no longer a viable approach, and new methods were needed for treating the huge volumes of waste generated by a growing city. Today, throughout the country, multimillion-dollar wastewater treatment plants clean wastewater by removing solids, settling out microscopic particles, decomposing toxic materials, and disinfecting. When effluent (treated wastewater) is released back into the watershed, it combines with other waters that eventually flow into the intakes of drinking water treatment plants and back to the faucets in households and businesses. It is an endless hydrologic (water) cycle.
 * Liquid Assets Movie Clip (Ask Joe for DVD)**
 * Chapter 2 - Three Systems:Drinking Water, Wastewater, & Stormwater (Approx. 13 min.)**


 * media type="custom" key="22939878" || Read an article about Wastewater Treatment from a High School Chemistry Magazine (pg.12)

An awesome "Virtual Tour" of a Wastewater Treatment Plant by the EPA (self-guided audio, pics, and text, designed for 6-12th graders)

Another virtual tour of a Wastewater Treatment Plant (self-guided pictures and text, designed for 9th-12th graders) ||

A watershed usually spreads across town and state borders, so different communities must come together to protect their common interests. Pittsburgh relies on three converging rivers (the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers) for industry, recreation, and drinking water. Yet Pittsburgh has combined sewer overflows (CSOs)—a condition when sewage and stormwater combine and pour solid waste directly into the rivers. Facing a consent decree and stiff fines, the city must reduce pollution levels and put a stop to the CSOs. Allegheny County Sanitation Authority (ALCOSAN), the region’s wastewater treatment plant, serves 83 separate and distinct cities and towns, so continued plans for watershed protection will require communication, coordination, and collaboration.
 * Liquid Assets Movie Clip (Ask Joe for DVD) **
 * Chapter 8 - Pittsburgh:Watershed Politics (Approx. 7.5 min.)**

Water infrastructure solutions from the past can cause unexpected consequences in the present. In the 1930s, faced with flooding and growing development, the city converted the Los Angeles river to a concrete flood-control channel to send street runoff and water overflows more quickly to sea. However, the region’s flood-control channels inadvertently created pathways—big “water slides”—for waste and trash to travel unfiltered to its beaches. City workers must now vacuum out the stormwater system with giant machines, and signs remind residents that the storm drains on their street carry whatever they might dump there, from soapy water to oil, directly to the ocean. Once of interest only to activists, water quality is now the concern of every Southern California community. To reduce the strain on the entire watershed system, some communities are working to restore portions of man-made infrastructure to natural systems, in order to filter pollutants and slow their swift drainage to the sea.
 * Liquid Assets Movie Clip (Ask Joe for DVD)**
 * Chapter 10 - Los Angeles: Protecting the Beaches (Approx. 7 min.)**

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