Kathrine W.

Hjortshøj
Water quality in the Animas River Watershed

Post-project reflection
For this project I learned about drinking water filtration, and the different steps of a water
treatment plant. The first step we had was coagulation and flocculation, in this step you add a
positive charged chemical, and these positive charged chemicals will bond with the negative
charged dirt and other dissolved particles, and form into larger particles. In the second step
called sedimentation, the particles settles to the bottom of the water due to its weight. In the
third step the water gets filtered with usually sand, gravel and charcoal, this step is to remove
dissolved particles, it could be dust, parasites, bacteria, viruses or chemicals. The last step we
had was disinfection, in this step the water gets disinfected by chlorine or chloramine, which is
added so any leftover germs or remaining particles gets killed. In some water treatments plants
they use a uv-system to kill the very last particles, this works by the ultraviolet rays that kills the
germs even more effectively.

A skill I learned through this project was working with deadlines, group work, and I learned how
to use canva to make our infographics. We only had about two weeks to make our project, so
having deadlines and be ready at a certain time was hard, but we worked it well out in my
group.

I think learning about our local water treatment plant and how we actually treat our water is very
important, it gives you a much better understanding of how the water goes from the river to our
houses. In my group we chose drinking water treatment, because people uses a lot of water
everyday but never thinks about how it ended there.