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From Streams to Sewers and Making the Connection from Sinks to Underground Infrastructure

Learning Experience 3

Big Ideas

As cities grow, public utility leaders have to continually meet the challenges of keeping people healthy by removing unsanitary waste water from where we live.

Rethink “Out of sight, out of mind” because there is no such place as away. Water cycles around and around in the urban water use system.

Summary

As cities developed, polluted streams that carried unsanitary waste were enclosed in underground pipes. A complex system exists right under our streets, maintained by municipal workers.

Engage

Why do cities choose to create an underground infrastructure for wastewater?

What does our underground system look like?

Solicit from students what they know, or think they know, about the sewer system in Philadelphia. After gathering their ideas, the video linked below, and in the slide deck will take them on a tour of a sewer system.

Watch this video: Sewer Crawler Video

Have students note evidence of the sewer system in the school yard or around the school. If a walk around the schoolyard or neighborhood is not possible, have students note evidence on their way home from or to school.

This map shows where storm drains should be located. https://markingapp.philadelphiawater.org/map

Explore and Explain

Construct a Model

Students use a shoebox as a model for a row house. Adding water-using appliances lets them see how the infrastructure is needed to take water in and out of the house.

The Journey of Your Flush

Guiding Question:

How do the parts of the sewer infrastructure system interact with one another within the whole system?

Look at the image that details how wastewater is cleaned before returning to the river where it will be captured for drinking water. Refer back to the picture of the house. The sewer systems channels the wastewater into collection stations in step 1.

Flush Map

Sewer Photographs

Examine the Word “Systems”

Hypothesize: What happens if a part is missing or malfunctioning. How would that affect the functioning of the whole system?

How does the wastewater treatment process demonstrate a system?

Elaborate

Under the streets and houses of this city courses many a stream which once sparkled and babbled along through the forest years before the white man had placed foot on the soil of the new world. The limpid waters once visited by the deer and panther have lost their sweetness and their beds have changed from the mossy banks in the woodland to the slimy walls of the sewer.” Hidden Streams Philadelphia Times Article 1889.

How did engineering take us from “mossy banks in the woodland” to slimy walls of the sewer?

Examining Primary Sources

If your students want to examine more primary source documents and photographs, use the links in the slide deck to identify locations and how the underground sewer system has changed the topography.

Down Under Tales from the City Sewer System

Sewer Photographs

Teacher Support

Essential Question:

What became of Philadelphia’s natural streams and valleys?

Guiding Questions:

Engage

Why do cities choose to create an underground infrastructure for wastewater?
What does our underground system look like? How do we know it’s there? How can water and people access that system?

Explore and Explain

How do the parts of the sewer infrastructure system interact with one another within the whole system?
What would happen if a part is missing or malfunctioning? How would that affect the functioning of the whole system?

Students will be able to:
Explore model sewer systems in order to test variables such as shape, slope, and size of pipes.
Describe and analyze how parts of a sewer system interact in order to determine what will happen if a part is missing or malfunctioning.
Describe the journey from flush to treatment plant and from storm sewer to treatment plant or to river.

BASIC VOCABULARY
Capacity noun
The maximum amount that something can contain

Engineer noun
A person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines or public works

Manhole noun
A small covered upending in a floor, pavement, or other surface to allow a person to enter, especially an opening in a city street leading to a sewer

Runoff noun
The draining away of water (or substances carried in it) from the surface of an area of land, a building or structure, etc.

Slope noun
A surface of which one end or side is at a higher level than another, a rising or falling surface

System noun
A set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole

Volume noun
The amount of space that a substance or object occupies

Wastewater noun
Wter that has been used in washing, flushing, manufacturing, etc.: sewage

ADVANCED VOCABULARY
Conduit noun
A pipe, tube, or the like for conveying water or other fluid

Culvert noun
A tunnel carrying a stream or open drain under a road or railroad

Infrastructure noun
1) The underlying foundation or basic framework (as of a system or organization) 2) The system of public works of a country, state or region

Construct a model of a row-home neighborhood using a shoe box and describe and analyze how parts of a sewer system interact.

Reflect on the following prompt in order to determine what will happen if a part is missing or malfunctioning: What would happen if a part is missing or malfunctioning. How would that affect the functioning of the whole system?

Examine historic writings and describe the photographs in order to tell the story (orally, visually or in writing) of the development of our underground sewer system  infrastructure in Philadelphia.

Describe the journey from flush to treatment plant and from storm sewer to treatment plant or to river by addressing the following prompt: Where does your wastewater go after it leaves your sight at home?

Students describe (in writing, drawing, song, comic) the journey of a drop of waste water from a home (sink, toilet, washing machine , dishwasher, etc.) down the drain, through the underground pipe system, to and through the sewer treatment plant, returned to the river, and then through the intake pipes, to the drinking water plant and through the pipes again all the way back home. Unit 2 describes the drinking water cycle and students may need to be reminded of that part of the story. )

PA STEELS Standards

Environmental Literacy and Sustainability

3.4.6-8.G Sustainability and Stewardship: Obtain and communicate information to describe how best resource management practices and environmental laws are designed to achieve environmental sustainability.

Related Standards

ELA W.7.2  Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

HIS 8.1.7  Social Studies: Historical Analysis – Demonstrate continuity and change over time using sequential order and context of events.

EfS C.4  The Dynamics of Systems and Change – See and be able to describe the interrelatedness of at least two variables.

EfS EU 13  Enduring Understandings – A small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything

Student Materials

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