Ceara Rice-Malkowski

Section: Wed. 10:30

Lab Report #2

Water Quality

Introduction
Bowling Green Wastewater Treatment Plant is receiving water from upstream
and treating it, then discharging it into downstream (Poe Road Ditch). Water
is treated so humans can consume it and not get sick. The water we use in
the shower, toilet, sink, etc. gets recycled back into the source which is a
river, stream, and lake. Thus, humans are responsible for a significant
amount of toxic substances in the aquatic systems. Since that water is
recycled back to humans for uses it must go through a water treatment
system. Water treatment is the process to make water acceptable
(Wikipedia). The water quality is based on concentration of fecal coliform
bacteria (mbuthia). We conducted an experiment to find out which water
quality is more acceptable for humans. The downstream (Poe Road Ditch)
water will be cleaner or more acceptable to humans than the upstream water
because the downstream water has been treated.
Materials and Methods
We put an mL of Poe Road Ditch water in the Easygel bottle and swirled the
bottle to distribute the inoculum. We poured the solution into our expensive
petri dish and sealed it. The solution settles for 24 hours and was
refrigerated until next class. This was done to count the bacteria in the Poe
Road Ditch water. To measure dissolved oxygen, we filled a 25ml container
with Poe Road water. We filled a test ampoule with the water by breaking the
tip in the corner of the 25ml container. This allowed for the water to fill the
ampoule and mix with the reagent. After 2 minutes, we used the comparator
to determine our dissolved oxygen. We determined the pH of the water by
dipping the pH paper in the water and comparing to a pH chart. To determine
rather the upstream water is healthy we examined some organism from it.
The type of organism can tell us about pollutants in the water. By counting
and identifying the organism we came up with the macro or index score
which tell us if the water is healthy or not.

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Results
Upstream
pH

7.1

Downstream(Poe Road
Ditch)
5.75

Dissolved Oxygen

7.8

7.75

Bacteria

7,360

7,300

Macro

2.9

A pH of 7 is acceptable for humans.

Healthy dissolved oxygen is 14.
2.6-3.5 = good which is a healthy stream.

Discussion
The downstream (Poe Road Ditch) water will be cleaner or more acceptable
to humans than the upstream water because the downstream water has
been treated. Our hypothesis was incorrect. According to our results the pH
for upstream was 7.1 and the downstream was 5.75. The downstream water
is more acidic than upstream water. The dissolved oxygen for upstream was
7.8 and for downstream it was 7.75. The results are almost the same and
neither one has a healthy DO. The bacteria in upstream were about 7,360
and in downstream were 7,300. These results are close in numbers as well.
The treatment plant cleared only 60 bacteria. The upstream water was 2.9
which mean it is in good standing. It was not a big difference between
upstream water quality and downstream water quality.

References
1. Mbuthia K. W. 2006. Environment of Life Laboratory Manual. Copley
Custom Textbooks.
2. Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/water_treatment . Online.