Water is way more complicated than H20
Be prepared to come up with some
questions when you see a big
?
In the late 1960s and early 1970s America’s water was
reaching a point of crisis. 2/3 of lakes, rivers and coastal
areas were unfit for fishing and swimming.
Fish were dying off in large quantities.
The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught on fire
(not for the first time).
?
Clean Water Act
• Enacted in 1972
• Goal to “restore the chemical, physical and
biological integrity of our nation’s waters.”
• By 1985 ZERO direct discharge of waste into
waterways
• Huge success… water quality improved
consistently
?
In 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) reported that America’s waterways were
getting dirtier for the first time since 1972.
What was going on?
The biggest source of pollution in
America right now is …
rain.
Runoff from farms causes a “dead zone” in the Gulf of
Mexico each summer. In 2013 it was 5,840 square miles.
(Credit: LUMCON (Rabalais))
In urban areas, impervious surfaces send water to
sewers instead of into the ground, lakes or streams.
We’ve added lots of roofs, parking lots and roads to our
cities over the last 40 years.
Combined sewer systems are over 100 years old and
can’t handle all that rain.
Combined
Sewer
Overflow
(CSO) #5
into the
Mill Creek,
on a dry
day
CSO #5 into the Mill Creek on a rainy day
?
What are we going to do about it?
• Find the answers to your ?s
• Assess water quality in a local stream (today!)
• Visit professionals from the Metropolitan Sewer
District of Greater Cincinnati to hear what they
are doing to decrease combined sewer overflows
• Check out different ways to keep rain out of the
sewer system
• Explore the quality of water coming off
impervious surfaces and
• Engineer systems that capture rain and allow
people to use it later.
The Challenge
Design a rainwater harvesting system for a local
organization. Work with the organization to come up
with a final design you can build and install on their
site. The system design must include:
• mechanisms by which water gets into and out
of storage
• system for distributing water to where it
needs to go
• a way to manage overflow
• cost-benefit analysis, budget reflects reality
• water budget
• operation and maintenance plan