1a) Philadelphia’s water system is something that goes back to the days Benjamin Franklin was around. Early on, it was a process to get the clean water needed for ever day living, however, they seemed to have figured it out. Philadelphia gets it’s water supply from the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, each contributing one half of the city’s water supply. In Philly, there are three water plants that process untreated river water. The Queen Lane Plant and Belmont Plant both get their water source from the Schuylkill, and the Baxter Plant gets it’s water from the Delaware river. Once processed at one of these plants, we get the clean form into our taps at home. This treatment process consists of eight steps; natural settling, disinfection, coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, final treatment, and lastly distribution. There are two types of sewer systems in Philly that collect waste water, and storm water. The combined, and separate sewer systems, and where your water goes just depends on what part of the city you live. These sewer systems take the water to treatment plants. There are also 164 combined sewer outfalls in case of combined sewer overflow that dump the access water into various parts of local creeks in rivers.

1b)

1c) Being born in a third world country, Bangladesh, showed me that it is possible for people to get by on two gallons of water. I was fortunate not to know what that feeling was like as I can imagine how tough it is. In my attempt to live off of just two gallons, I made a list of priorities. First priority for myself is drinking water. More than anything else, I need to be able to drink water, we have to survive right? Second would be cooking, third would be for toilet purposes because we do need to keep a sanitary environment if we want to stay healthy. Everything else such as cleaning, bathing would have to come after that, not by choice, but by necessity. For baths and showers, I would wet a hand towel and use that to clean myself rather than actually dumping the water on me. In this scenario, every drop counts and I believe you can still keep yourself clean to a certain extent without actually dumping the water. I am blessed to be living where I am that I don’t need to live on two gallons a day, as I drink almost two gallons as it is. The previous experiment of just counting how much water I use to this, how much water I can use, was a huge difference. Made me wonder how many things we take for granted living in the US. I’m using over 160 gallons per day and don’t bat an eyelash, and struggled with two gallons to accommodate myself.