Driving Question
How is clean and accessible drinking water in Philadelphia a civic responsibility?
Big Ideas
In most places in the world today, even water from a relatively clean natural source probably needs to be cleaned and tested before it can be consumed.
In Philadelphia, drinking water treatment is a multi-step process that in many cases mimics nature but also is tested every step of the way to comply with federal regulations and ensure public health.
Summary
Making safe and reliable tap water requires a multi-step treatment process. Modeling one of the very important steps to clean water in class will help students see the evidence for themselves.
Engage
Class discussion:
(ask these questions at the beginning and at the end of this activity)
Why would we need to treat the source water from our rivers before distributing it to our taps ?
Who should be responsible for making sure this process is safe and reliable ?
Watch Drinking Water Treatment System, to learn the steps of the Drinking Water Treatment Process. Take notes
A list of vocabulary terms is available HERE
Explore and Explain
Show this short video and ask students to take notes of the names of the 7 steps of the Drinking water Treatment Process
Philadelphia Drinking Water Treatment System by watching a video,
Use this Google Draw Document Drinking Water Treatment Poster Blank. Make a Copy. The full version with answers filled in may be found HERE.
Have students work in small groups or as a full class to review the steps. Use the vocabulary list to help students understand what is happening in each step of the process and the forces involved.
Elaborate
If you want to share a striking example of how polluted our waterways were as a consequence of the industry and manufacturing before federal regulation, share this newspaper story about Frankford Creek (this is only one article of many about how polluted the rivers were in the early to mid 20th century ) These pictures and letters from Philly H20: A Sad History of Frankford Creek depict the issue from 1938. Also here as a one-page format: Frankford Creek.
In modern times, the headwaters of the Schuylkill River are discolored by abandoned coal mine drainage
Now ask the same questions:
Why would we need to treat the source water from our rivers before distributing it to our taps ?
Who should be responsible for making sure this process is safe and reliable ?
NEXT CLASS STUDENTS WILL DIVE INTO THESE QUESTIONS BY REVIEWING regulations and Drinking Water Quality Report
Extension
COMPARE TO OTHER REGIONS NEAR PHILADELPHIA
Compare the Philadelphia Water Department Drinking Water Treatment process to other treatment processes. Consider differences in the way they treat the water, influences of geography, population, water supply, industry. See Regional Guide to water treatment for descriptions of the drinking water treatment process in Wilmington, Reading and Delaware as an example.
Teacher Support
Driving Question:
How is clean and accessible drinking water in Philadelphia a civic responsibility?
Guiding Questions:
What does it take for us to drink a glass of fresh, clean, delicious water?
Engage:
How do we know water is safe to drink?
Explore and Explain:
Can we convert our polluted water to gray water through filtration?
How can we model water filtration the way nature does it?
Is filtration enough to make water potable?
Students will be able to:
Differentiate between potable, gray, waste water and polluted water by recording reflections, ideas, and surprises in their Watershed Journal.
Build a model of a water filtration system in order to “make the polluted water sample useable as gray water.”
Filtration noun
The act of capturing impurities from the water as it passes through a layer of sand, gravel and charcoal now called rapid sand filtration. Philadelphia first introduced a slow sand filtration process in the early 1900s using sand and gravel only.
Filtered water noun
Water that has undergone a process to make it cleaner and safe to drink
Sedimentation noun
The process of matter settling to the bottom of a liquid by gravity.
Unfiltered Water noun
raw water
Wastewater noun
Water that comes from flushed toilets, sewers and manufacturing plants that needs to be treated before it enters our waterways
Students write or diagram the filtration process.
Students will complete the Filtration Activity Observation worksheet.
PA STEELS
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.