Weather Challenges

Imagine a day without water in your home tap. To know more how we get clear and hygienic water we went on a class field trip to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority(MWRA) to learn about the MWRA system. From there I came to know that the water we see in rivers/ponds is treated before it comes to our taps. The treated water is stored in 48 water facilities at different locations that indeed supply water to different communities. Some of which are Weston, Marlborough, Ludlow, Stoneham, Arlington, Lexington, Quincy, West Roxbury etc. The MWRA has 1,025 employees, working diligently in delivering clean drinking water. During my field trip I met one of the workers named Brooklyn and talked about the challenges they face during extreme weather conditions.

Brooklyn is one of the MWRA employees. She started to work there because she lived near the Quabbin Reservoir and was curious from her childhood to know what magic is done to water to clean it. While talking to her I came to know that the Quabbin and Wachusett are the two biggest facilities in which the MWRA cleans the water. These reservoirs are protected and also store natural water, rain and snow.

On 26 January, 2014, a snow storm named Irene arrived. There was a snow storm for two continuous days. On the second day of the storm Brooklyn got an urgent phone call from the manager saying to her that near the Quabbin Reservoir one the major water supply pipes serving 4 communities was leaking and there is water outage and more than 1000 families are affected. When she heard the situation, she called a few other workers and they all set off to the site. When she arrived, she could not see a thing, the pipe got covered under 5 feet of snow. With great efforts, she finally located the leaking pipe and started to dig with her co-workers. They dug for hours before they got to the bottom and to their surprise there was a big breakage and the water had frozen and was as hard as brick.

Brooklyn thought about what to do to deal with the situation Finally, she strategized a working plan She asked her friends to call the manager to turn off the water supply to the leaking pipe. They all then started working step by step on her plan.

The plan’s first step was to place a piece of rubber over the leaking area. Secondly, she placed a block of wood on the top of rubber. Then the plan was to open the c-clamp wide enough to surround the pipe, the gasket and the block of wood. Lastly, to screw the c-clamp against the block of wood. Following these steps, they could successfully fix the leakage in the pipe.

After the job was completed, they quickly got into the car, and went to the MWRA and reopened the supply to the broken water pipe. When the manager heard the news, she appreciated Brooklyn and her team for their efforts. They acted like true heroes. While we were having hot chocolate in a warm blanket, they were outside in the freezing weather doing their job. It was even harder for Brooklyn and her team because at that time it was 10:00 pm. The workers were true heroes.