Week 2: Post-Post

I decided in an effort of diversity in blog content with my peers I would use Melbourne, Florida, where my parents live, as my location.

The City of Melbourne's official websites states "Our water supply is derived from two independent sources, Lake Washington, and the Floridan Aquifer. " Obviously, the Florida Aquifer is a common source. Lake Washington (which I only knew to be a neighborhood and a tiny lake that my school did a clean-up service project at once in 8th grade) is descibed by the city as "part of the St. Johns River, the largest river in Florida. Lake Washington is approximately four miles long, and mile wide, and 10 to 15 feet deep. Lake Washington is one of the few surface water supplies used for drinking water in Florida." I was surprised that the lake is so shallow and yet we use it as a water source, and a rare surface water one at that.

As for waste water treatment plants (WWTP), in Melbourne we have two: D. B. Lee WWTP which deals with 7 million gallons per day and Grant Street WWTP which processes 5.5 million gallons per day these two plants service 74,000 customers. The City of Melbourne makes no differentiation between these waste water plants and solid waste plants, so I assume they are one in the same.

Our power is supplied by FPL or Florida Power and Light which supplies the majority of the Atlantic coast of Florida with power.
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On to my water testing experience!

I'll be honest, I procrastinated a bit. There were just so many fun things going on this weekend. So, at 9 pm on Saturday night, I was walking toward Lake Holloway, when a few of my friends asked me where I was going. I explained what I was doing, and they decided to join me. A group of 5 of us made our way down to the dock. The two boys..er.. men helped me retreive the water, but not before we paused to watch some of the baby ducklings!

One things I discovered is that I will not be swimming in that lake anytime soon. The amount of visible organisms was enough of a deterrent, that I can not imagine what the microscopic ones are in number. Once I returned to a well lit area and preformed the tests, my readings were as follows: Air Temp- 22'C; Turbidity- 0 JTU; Water Temp- 30'C; DO- 4; and pH- 9.5.

This was not an entirely new concept to me. I went on a field trip when I was in the Advanced/Gifted Program in elementary school in Hillsborogh County. We went to the actual Zephyrshills Spring where the bottling company draws their water and pulled our own test samples. We then did similar tests to the ones we did today, as well as looking at the samples compared to the Zephyrhills Bottled Water samples, under a microscope. It also brought back memories of being obsessed with testing the pool water at the camp we lived at when I was in elementary school. Something is absolutely fascinating to a young mind about mixing the different drops to test all the water levels.