I am taking
the class English 181b which is an adventure lit class offered at Penn State
where we venture to places that connect with what we our learning in class. Our
latest field trip was to the State College sewage treatment plant, University
Joint Association, where we were given a tour by the manger, Art, and spoken to
about how the plant works.
I will
fully admit that I was nervous about going; I fully admit to being a girly girl
and spending an hour or so touring the place where all people's waste from this
area goes sounded smelly and unfortunate. Now I am not going to lie, it
smelled, not unbearably, but I actually found the tour very engaging, the
sewage treatment plant is actually doing many high tech things.
The first
building we ventured into was where the sewage water was being filter through
these tubes (each tube worth about $1,000) that had a sort of microfiber inside
of them that cleaned/strained the water that went through it. In the back of
the room there is a computer set up that monitors all the machines in the plant
and actually controls all of them. During our tour we were shown how they
monitor how clean the tubes are, that there number on the screen when said 15
must be changed. When he was showing us the middle section was showing the
number 14 so he said that meant tomorrow they would need to be changed (meaning
almost $90,000 worth of new equipment would be used tomorrow). This is not all
that the water goes through he said it also is it with ultraviolet light to
separate the particles and previously to what we were seeing it had already
been strained between solids and liquids and went through machines that used
processes such as light and chlorine to separate the water (this is clear
because it went from mucky brown water to clear).
One could
tell that Art was very proud of what they were doing at the plant. During the
beginning of the tour he was prefacing what he was going to show us and he said
that the plant is allotted 9 million gallons but due to regulation they are only
allowed to dump 7 gallons into the river. They needed to figure out what to do
with the rest of the of the waste they had. This is when they hired engineers
to create a way to turn this waste into water that could be used to within the
community. Currently the plant's water they produce is feeding the stream at
the bottom of their property as well as the wetlands on their property and
that's not all. The water is being used in local hotels pools and for dishes
and laundry machines. He also spoke of a few other different places using their
water lines for example the gold course uses their water to water the courses
grass.
Since this
is before I had seen anything the plant does my first thought was I am never, ever swimming in that pool.
As we went through the tour though I saw how clean this water really was
getting; he even said that it is actually cleaner than the water we actually
use in State College, but it is plain and simple that people just cannot get
past that it is poop water and therefore do not want it to be classified as
drinking water.
When I
shower or do the dishes or use the restroom to me that water and the waste I am
producing was just gone. I never thought about the fact that it had to go somewhere,
and that it was someone's problem to deal with. Even if I had though I now I
could have never guessed how much science has gone into making our sewage benefit
the environment and be safe to reuse. Art said that they even have 2 million fresh
gallons of water stored in case of emergencies, such as if the fire department
needed to pull water from it.
He walked
us down to the river that their water was feeding to and gallons and gallons of
water was being pours into it, which opposed to the wetlands where it was
almost just a constant trickle feeding into it. There plans for the future is
to expand, apparently there is a stream next to IHOP that goes dry during the
summer season, last year people had to save the trout in it because there was
not enough water for them to survive, and they want to pipe and keep that
stream active. In that direction they also want to create a wetland with their
excess water; he says everything they are doing is in attempt to give back to
the community and environment.
The thing I
thought that was really interesting that he was that through looking at the
sewage in State College he can actually infer life at State College. He said
Christmas day is the day when sewage produced is the lowest; he also said that breaks
he can tell how many people left because the numbers drastically drop. Laughing
he said he can even tell when it was a particularly fun night at Penn State!
How weird that our sewage is telling our story!!
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