Today Year Five continued our community hero inquiry with a visit from Kathryn from Watercare. She was focusing on how Watercare does an amazing job of dealing with our waste water. Aren't we lucky that all our waste water just disappears down pipes?!
We began with a teacher vs. students game to identify all the ways water goes done a drain inside our buildings. Some ideas were - dishwashers, sinks, toilets, wet rooms, waste disposals and showers.
Next, we went back in time to discover how Maori desposed of there waste water by digging holes far far away from the living areas. We were surprised to here that when the Europeans came they mixed up the waste water on Queen Street with the natural spring that was used for cooking, drinking and wshing. This casued a typhoid outbreak. To solve this problem the colonials created the job of a "Night Soil Collector", so people didn't tip their waste into the waterways. When the population increased, pipes were dug under the ground to take the waste water away to treatment plants.
We love being able to flush our waste away, but we need to look after this system so it will keep working. Here's how:
- Only the 3 P's - pee, poo and (toilet) paper down the toilet
We watched the "Disgusting Fatberg Video". It was disgusting. What did we learn?
- fat and waste solidifies into "fatbergs" that block the sewer and have to be broken up
- DON'T put fat down your sink
- people that break up fatbergs get paid around the same amount as teachers
Our waste water goes to treatment plants.
1 The lumps bigger than 3mm (like lost toys) are taken out and sent to the dump
2 Reactor/Clarifiers that are 77m in diameter remove nitrogen with bugs that eat bacteria
3 Ultraviolet lamps kill viruses
4 Gravity Belt Thickeners remove particles
5 Anaerobic sludge digesters
6 Centrifuge
7 Inter-tidal ponds send it out to sea
8 Leftover biosolids are used to build land like at Puketutu Island
Lastly we conducted a water density experiment using water, salt, food colouring and plastic piping.
How will you protect our waster water network at home?
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