On 1/23/17 my group and I had an interview with Phil Kassen. He works at LREI and is the director. Our question was why the water filtration systems were changed in the lower, middle, and high school. He said that he changed the water filtration systems because of what had been happening with Flint in Michigan.
I learned that since the pipes in NYC are old, they have lead in them. The water that is transferred to the school that comes out of faucets isn’t filtered, but the water in the water fountains is filtered. When the water from the water fountain comes out really low it means that it’s an old filter and it’s clogged with whatever it’s taken out of the water and slows the passage of water through. The school changes the filters on a regular basis. Over the summer during the night, or early in the morning, they take a sample of the water before it has been used and after it has been sitting in the pipes for about 6 hours, they let it run for a minute, then you test it again. They tested all the water both ways and in every water outlet the amount of lead was well below the legal amount of lead that you’re aloud to have in your water. But that wasn’t enough for them. If they found any lead in the water they installed water filters. For the sinks in the lower school classrooms they installed water filters because of small traces of lead and when they tested the water again it was zero. In all three buildings (lower, middle, and high school) no one is drinking lead in their water. After a certain amount of years they will test the water again to see if they need to fix or change anything. He also said that all of the lead is in the older parts of the building because it has older pipes.
Another thing he talked about was that they don’t re-use water Grey water because they don’t have many things to use the water for (plants, lawns). Although he said they could use some of it for the roof’s mini garden.
They try to waste the least amount of water by putting the water bottle fountain attachment to make it easier to re-fill water bottles. Another way to cut down on water usage was to stop using a lot of dishes. A big problem was that a lot of the dishwasher loads are just filled with trays and that wastes a lot of water. Especially when there are still plates and silverware left to clean. The high school uses less water because they use less trays.
The school recently got new trashcans that are magnetic so they can catch as much accidentally thrown away utensils. This is very important because metal doesn’t bio-degrade so a metal fork will sit in a garbage mound for many decades.
Over all, this was a very interesting and helpful interview. Learning about what happens in my own community is very interesting and eyeopening because it makes you realize how much water and plastic is wasted.
