Water Quality

We recently did a project on the processes for treating the water that you and I drink everyday. One of the first steps to this project was looking up information about our water like where it is treated and what it is treated with. After we had learned plenty of information; we had a special guest speaker come in and explain to us the job that she does everyday. We traveled to Hardwood Mills and took a two day tour of the reservoir. We saw all of their equipment. After our trip to the Mill we came back to the school and performed our own treatment of some water that we picked up from the reservoir. It did not work as well as we thought it would, but you can’t expect much when you’re using at home products like coffee filters and water bottles. We took bugs and bacteria and examined them under a microscope too. After that, we did a presentation of the entire project to the school.

We went to the Newport News Waterworks to find out if they are giving accurate readings each year in their water report. We used the facility’s equipment to test water from all over the York County area. While we were there we talked about the plant and how it works from where they get the water to the finished product. What we found was that most of our results were the same as what was on the water report. The only sample that was different was the one that was on a different water system. Our results confirmed that the Newport News Annual Drinking Water Report is accurate.

Global Water Resources

This project was supported by a grant from the York Foundation for Public Education.

This page was created by YRA's sophomore class of 2004.