5/20/19:
The Dayton Water Department paid a visit to our school today. With them, they brought the River Mobile, a CCTV robot truck, and water testing vehicle. Each of them contributed to our knowledge about water and how we are affected by it. Here is a recap of what I learned today:
A Watershed is the area of land that has access to a river; water on a watershed eventually drains off into nearby lakes or rivers. The school is located in the Little Beavercreek Watershed. An aquifer is a reservoir for water deep beneath the ground. It is like a sponge because it is mostly sediment, and the water is only able to fill in the spaces between the sediment. It turns out that the water in aquifers is really clean because it has been filtered through the sediment. The water we consume is actually groundwater, being treated at a facility.
Dayton actually has two different drains: storm drains and sewage drains. The storm drain is basically the Storm water; water that has run off the road. It is not treated and leads directly to a nearby river. Issues with littering in storm drains were addressed, as the ecosystems in the rivers are affected by the storm drains. The sewage drains have water from either businesses, industries, or residential areas. This is the water that needs the most treatment because of the industrial chemicals and human waste. It is sent to wastewater treatment plants, were multiple biological processes filter out the water. This water is then distributed back to the community.
Understanding where water comes from makes me live more deliberately because I am now more conscious about water usage and conservation by deliberately using water . I know the adverse effects of littering in the storm drain. Rivers are very interconnected. The storm drains we use drain into a river near us. These rivers drain into the Mississippi. The Mississippi drains into the gulf of mexico. The gulf of Mexico drains into the Atlantic ocean. This is the story of how the trash you throw upstream can end up any body on the face of the earth, wreaking havoc along the way. There are some products that seem innocuous, but are very harmful in the long term. Nutrient rich chemicals that get washed into the rivers make their way to the Gulf of Mexico. Once there, they feed the algae and cause them to grow in population. This is detrimental to the life below them, who receive less sunlight as a result of the "algal bloom". An important lesson I learned is that what we do upstream affects everyone downstream. Multiple people talked about how going out in nature causes you to love it, and in turn preserve it. This is what living deliberately is. It is going it out in nature and realizing that it needs to be preserved.
Poem:
This is the hill, steep and narrow
This is the farm, green and fresh
This is the road, dirty and cold
This is the gutter, dirty and shallow
These are the fish, agile and golden
This is the algae, green and spongy
This is the river, wet and wild
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