Infrastructure of Waterworks
In America, the average person uses an estimated total of 150 gallons of water per day.
This one statistic is enough to convince people just how important water is to humans. The
dictionary defines waterworks as, “a complete system of reservoirs, pipelines, conduits, etc., by
which water is collected, purified, stored, and pumped to urban users.” Using the Grizzly Bear Model,
the waterworks’ infrastructure can be broken down to its key components for analysis.
First of all, the generation of drinking water is mostly drawn from dams or reservoirs on
lakes or rivers that hold enough water to stock the city with water. Once stored, it must be
moved to a filtration plant to be cured for safe drinking. For smaller cities or towns that are in
dry regions of our country that only have a small population, a well could suffice by pumping
water from an underground aquifer through a pipe that runs water to the surface after being
filtered. It is typically clean drinking water because the sands and rock filter it so well running
the underground earth.
Secondly, bulk transmission would include the transmission of water to the filtration
plant and from the filtration plant to the distribution centers and community water tanks. The
main ways to transmit water in bulk are through an aqueduct and through a pumping station.
The only problem with an aqueduct is that water cannot be moved uphill for long distances. For
short distances, like hills and valleys, water can be lifted using siphons and inverted siphons.
Pumping stations are usually found around near to reservoirs or dams. The way the water is
transported is through pressurized pipelines and although water in these pipes does not move
very fast, it has enough momentum to stop a large train.
After this, water is distributed for use of consumers that may be at a household,
business, hospital, school, or even a fire hydrant. Water distribution is all about using pressures
to supply these buildings while accounting for distance traveled, pipe diameter, friction, and
elevations. Engineers have found that building an additional water supply station at each end of
the town works best because it is hard to accumulate enough pressure at the reservoir or dam
to adequately provide pressure needed in faucets or showers after pushing water all the way
through town and accounting for everyone else that is tapping into the same water line before
it gets to the furthest person.
Water is one of the only things in the world that humans actually need. However, even
though drinking water is used in numerous ways, humans only need drinking water for drinking.
Humans want drinking water enough for demand to be extremely high - so much that America
spends an average of $2 billion on water treatment annually. Water is used in kitchens for
washing dishes and hands, in laundry rooms for cleaning clothes, and in bathrooms for
showering, brushing teeth, and flushing toilets. Drinking water is also used in hospitals to keep
patients hydrated, fighting fires, to fill swimming pools, and farming.
Therefore, there is always water waste to deal with from any of the uses listed above.
Engineers try to design sewage systems using gravity alone to move the waste. However, there
is sewage pumping stations for small communities but they are not very efficient because the
pumps get clogged up easily. Sewer treatment separates the solid waste from the liquid waste
using a trash rack, grit chamber, settling tanks, and trickling filters. It is then run through
disinfecting agents and sludge digestion systems. The solids that were filtered out can be used
as fertilizer or burnt in an incinerator.
Finally, the coordination of the waterworks infrastructure is simple. It works based off of
supply and demand. City government supplies the water to communities where private owners
buy their water from them. Water treatment plants and waste management plants make
money from making the water safer and cleaner from people and the environment.
In a recent article on www.governing.com, it said, “Given the interdependencies among
transportation, water, energy and waste systems, it makes a great deal of sense to formulate
planning regionally.” It also says that it will take over $1 trillion to maintain and update our
infrastructure over the next 30 years. The article claims that leaders have started to build a plan
of which structures are in most need of updating and where to spend and where to finance this
large of a project. It also talks about people who are experts in their particular field saying that
they become so obsessed with their own field that they forget about how interdependent the
field is with other fields of the country’s infrastructure. This has convinced some government
officials that certain fields are more important than others.
Firstly, in my opinion this makes the planning mentioned in the article very hard
because the government officials who should be supporting each other are arguing about which
section our nation’s infrastructure is most important when in reality they are equal. For the
most productivity in government, I think we should work as a team rather than coerce and act
selfish if we are really trying to better our country and not ourselves.
Secondly, I think we have a real problem in planning because no one wants to pay the
$1 trillion. No one really gets rewarded for paying for it because it is not an investment made by
a company or corporation. Politicians may say that they will spend their money to fix these
issues to get votes but after they are elected, they find things that would make themselves look
better to the general public to spend their money on.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/us-china-pollution-wateridUSBRE91J19N20130220