Braden and the Poo Factory

Tuesday my water quality class took a field trip. First, we went to the water processing plant which takes water from Lake Whatcom and distributes it to all the college students and old people in the area. According to my water quality professor, the algae in the lake produces organic compounds in the summer which arne't filtered out that give the water an odor, which some locals described as "earthy" and "musty." Ok, good to know.
Here is our guide Bill showing us what they use to filter the water. As you can see, it's basically a giant Britta filter with anthracite coal at the top (Brittas actually use charcoal) and coarse gravel at the bottom. This seems a little backwards, but after a filter is clogged with the crap that's filtered out, they run water through it backwards at a high rate and it stratifies everything, as seen here. Clever, no? The dirty water looks kind of like the chocolate stream from a certain chocolate factory and just like that stream, swimming in it is bad. The waste water is pumped through 60 inch pipes directly to the waste water treatment plant, where we went next!

Time to guess what this stuff is. Here's a hint: those yellow specks are corn, and there's a lot of rice in there, and, OH, some beans. Gross. I have a close up picture, but I'm still trying to scrub it from my memory. I'll let you guys enjoy this instead. Zoom in at your own risk. Any-dang-way, our tour guide was really funny. He was wearing cowboy boots, chewing gum, and making jokes about his ex-wife. It seems that the personalities of our tour guides really fit where they worked. Pretty funny, if you ask me.
There were only a few rooms that really stank, and for the most part it wasn't too bad. Looking at these, I ask myself why I took so many pictures of poo. Trust me, I'm not posting the worst stuff. Maybe I'll put it on my Flickr someday.