Three Rivers High School science teacher Joe Graber holds one of the test tubes being used for homeowners to submit water samples for a water quality project in his Applied Physics class. Students will be testing samples to see if there is anything harmful in the city’s water, while also learning about the scientific method.
By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
THREE RIVERS — A Three Rivers High School science class is looking to get to the bottom of one of the hottest topics in the city for the past several years – the quality of the city’s water.
Students in Joe Graber’s Applied Physics class will be embarking on a project for the next month to learn more about the scientific method, and to find out what exactly is in the water in Three Rivers, using water samples from city residents who are interested in participating.
“Obviously, it’s been a volatile issue on social media, and we’re kind of like, that’s something that’s current, it’s meaningful, it’s something we can take a look at,” Graber said. “What we want to do is see what we can do to test the water and try to, maybe not definitively have a conclusion, but at least test to the ability we have.”
The main question the project is seeking to answer, according to the students’ working document, is simple: Is the water from Three Rivers’ water system safe to drink? The hypothesis that will be tested is that the water system “contains unsafe levels of one or more substances,” with the class gathering samples, ideally from different areas of the city, to either verify or disprove the hypothesis.
City residents interested in assisting with the project by submitting tap water samples from their own homes can do so by stopping by the high school’s front office, where test tubes will be available during school hours for people to pick up. Each test tube has a unique serial number and a sheet inside with a link and a QR code to a Google Form, which residents must fill out to participate. It will ask for data such as the test tube number, name, address, where the sample is being collected, and whether or not the water is filtered or treated. Samples can then be returned to the high school front office.
If a sample is returned to the high school office without having filled out the Google Form, Graber said, that sample will not be used in the data analysis.
Using water tests that are commercially available to homeowners, students will then test the water samples for 16 things: alkalinity, pH, hardness, cyanuric acid, total chlorine, free chlorine, free bromine, nitrate, nitrite, iron, chromium, lead, copper, mercury, fluoride, and carbonate root. The tests they use will be color-coded to inform whether a category is higher, lower, or at acceptable levels.
Students are also planning to test water quality at each of the district’s schools, and while residents can pick up and drop off tests as soon as right now, the testing process won’t begin for another few weeks.
The current plan is once the data is collected, tested, double checked and entered, the class would present their findings at a city commission meeting. Currently, they anticipate doing so in late March, but Graber said the timeline is subject to change.
Talks about doing a project related to water quality began at the beginning of the year, with more momentum put into it by the beginning of January, when second semester began. As the class is focused on using projects to teach the principles of physics, the main purpose is for students to learn more about the scientific method while tackling a hot-button issue.
“The purpose, really, of this is teaching scientific method and allowing them the experience of working on something bigger like that,” Graber said. “The endgame is these folks here learning how to do something like that and how it works. They may never do it in their life, but to get a better idea of how to do that size of a project, how to do data collection, how to be consistent with it, kind of the things you have to do behind the scenes to do it. If we come up with conclusions, that’s great, but the main thing is getting a good learning experience out of it.”
Graber stressed that while he has informed the city’s Department of Public Services that his class is doing this project, and that the department is supportive of their efforts, they are not collaborating with the city on any part of the project, and are doing it completely on their own.
“Right now, we have no interaction with them, we’re doing this completely all on our own. I could go to them and ask for a list of who they wanted us to [collect samples from], but we’re not doing that. We’re completely on our own for a reason,” Graber said.
With that said, Graber said the class is finalizing details to go on a tour of the city’s wellfields and the water tower sometime in mid-March to learn about how the water system in the city works. He’s also been working with officials at the city’s wastewater treatment plant for a future tour of the facility for his chemistry class. With the water, Graber said it would be beneficial to know where the water in the city comes from and how the system works.
“People have a lot of concepts of how the system works that aren’t really reality, and I think it’ll be good for these guys to know how it is,” Graber said. “I think it’ll be interesting to see where the water comes from. We can take samples from those wells too, test them before and after treatment.”
In the future, Graber said he hopes to collect data for a longer period time to have a sample over a 10 or 15-year period.
“It’d be nice to get longitudinal data on this and do this year after year. It’d be nice to look at data and see how it’s changed over the years. It’d be a nice big chunk of data,” Graber said.
Students in the class say they are looking forward to collecting the data and knowing what’s in the water.
“I think it’s a really important thing for people to know what they’re drinking,” junior Mak Vroman said. “I feel like a lot of people need to know what exactly what they’re putting in their bodies.”
“It feels relieving in a way to figure out what’s in the water,” junior Nicholas Roberts said. “There’s a lot of speculation going around, some people think it’s a big deal, some people don’t. Some days the water’s good and sometimes it’s not.”
Overall, Graber is looking forward to the experience as well.
“I think it’s important for the class not only for them learning how to do something like that and the scientific method, but I think it’s important that they get to work on something relevant, timely, and obviously important to a lot of people,” Graber said. “The truth is, this project, people will probably listen to this, especially if we do it well. I’m looking forward to having a couple of students stand before city council and have all these students be there and give them our conclusions. What other project do I have where we can really do that?”
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@threeriversnews.com.