Today we had the wonderful opportunity to go on a tour of a water treatment plant in RedHook. The plant treats toilet water, industrial wastewater, grey water, and storm water. Their main reason for treating the water is to protect public health. We learned that water borne diseases can in grow easily dirty water, and that that bacteria has the potential to contaminate our drinking water supply, which could be deadly.

There are many steps that the water has to go through before it is discharged into the East River. It must travel through different tanks

The water tanks and a great view

and undergo many different treatments before it is deemed suitable to discharge. The water is treated with friendly bacteria, chlorine, and is purified with a host of other filtration systems.

Another goal of the plant is to prevent pollution. If dirty, contaminated water is released into our environment, it would cause a lot of serious water pollution that could negatively affect our ecosystem. We got to see all the different tanks at the different stages of treatment. We also learned about the shockingly massive amount of water that we use each day, and that flows through the plant. It was really interesting to hear about the spikes in the amount of water coming into the plant because of the higher rate of facility use that occurs in the morning.