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Learning Activity 8-B-1: Local History Project
The local history project is 99.46% completed. I'll go back into it once or twice more, looking for typos or "missing links," just in case some were missed. You should be able to access it in the attached wiki @CincinnatiWaterSupply. Woohoo! Bernie

== Learning Activity 3-D-2: Local Documents, Data, and Cartoons ==

To start, I have a question for Jana. I'm trusting that you will read this! :-) I will likely use all or some of the primary sources that were included in Activity 3-D-1 for my completed local history project. Should they have been included here as well, if for no other reason than that I don't lose track of them? I'm still fumbling around with the format as it will evolve over the next five weeks or so. And, yes, I know that the YouTube down below doesn't really fit until Module 6. I feared that if it wasn't included here this week, I would hopelessly lose it somewhere in the vastness of the Internets; I'll seamlessly move it in a few weeks, if that's okey-dokey. Early in the lesson, we will brainstorm on what students think is in the tap, where it's been, and why we usually assume that it is potable. Does tap water need a warning label?

To follow this up, can you ignite your tap water with a match? Check out Light your water on fire. This interesting YouTube will help to continue our discussion about the safety of our tap water and what might be upstream of our home pipes.

To complete our introductory brainstorming, as Jeff Foxworthy might say, "Your water might be recycled if...."

So, where do we go from here? Who protects our drinking water? Just what is the story of drinking water? This summary has been put together by a group called the Ground Water Consortium, which focuses on groundwater resources in southwest Ohio. Some of us get our drinking water from wells (groundwater) and some of us get our drinking water from rivers (like the Ohio River). In Butler County, wells are most common; in Hamilton County, river water is the norm. Some places even use a mix of both.

Since most drinking water in southwest Ohio comes from the Ohio River, which is the same place that we dump most of our sewage (We'll come back to that!), what are some Ohio River Facts? These are courtesy of the Ohio River Foundation, whose mission "is to protect and improve the water quality of the Ohio River and all waters in its watershed for the benefit and enjoyment of current and future generations.'

As we look even more locally at the issues of our water supplies, we'll use the resources of two regional organizations. The Greater Cincinnati Water Works ===="provides about 136 million gallons of water a day through 3,000 miles of water mains to most of Hamilton County and parts of Butler and Warren Counties in Ohio, and to Boone County in Kentucky." The Butler County Storm Water District has a mission "to safeguard public health and protect the environment." Most all of our students live in one of the two counties. If you live in Hamilton County, the GCWW focuses on the Ohio River and keeping our water potable. If you live in Butler County, odds are that you drink groundwater, so the BCSSD is more concerned with keeping pollution out of our aquifers. ====

To complete this section, I hope to use one other source in the initial brainstorming moments. Early on, Cincinnati was settled largely by Germans. So, logically enough, the German community established Die Cincinnati Wasserwerse. I found this nifty primary source from 1877, documenting the early years of the GCWW; I actually lost the reference for a few day and somehow found it this evening. Ain't Google and the "all history" toggle on the toolbar just grand? I'm not sure what I'll do with this, the primary source of primary sources, at least for this little project.

== Learning Activity 4-D-1: Local Photos and Posters ==



For a distinctive photograph of one of the earliest water storage tanks, the Cincinnati Museum has this 5-tank picture, c. 1917. Pretty neat. What happened to these 5 tanks, and similar ones, over the past decades? These tanks, one of many such "tank farms," hold a total of 4.6 million gallons of drinking water. As a web search, students could be asked to find examples of what modern tanks look like. Have they seen any driving around town? How could they find out the capacities of modern storage facilities?

How does water get treated before it gets to these storage tanks? The GCWW has a simplified technical diagram which summarizes all of the treatment technologies involved in purifying our water. Students can select portions of the treatment processes and look at the chemistry and engineering techniques involved:

The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission is one of many groups that help to minimize pollution entering and staying in the Ohio River and other water bodies in our watershed. Each year they sponsor a with lots of volunteers. This could become part of a service-learning project for this unit. The next clean-up event, River Sweep, is scheduled for this fall:

Many of my current students live just to the north of Cincinnati, in Butler County. Some of their water supply comes from the local aquifer system rather than from the Ohio River. To introduce groundwater and some of its local advantages and disadvantages, we'll look at a map of Butler County groundwater resources: How do we protect our water resources from terrorist attacks? Cincinnati is part of a Federal pilot project started after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The details of this pilot project, started in 2006 and since expanded to include New York City and some other municipalities, will be prime material for possible expansion of this unit to include other content areas.

From the national level, I'm not sure if it would be better to talk about the USEPA and early or later during this lesson. This poster summarizes some of the issues introduced above and other challenges to our water resources supplies.

== Learning Activity 5-D-1: ==

Audio and Music
This week was a bit more challenging, being unfamiliar with audio or music options, especially related to this specific topic. A lot of promising websites have yet to digitize their audio archives; one example is the Ohio Historical Society. A43 might be of interest for this project; it would currently need to be accessed directly through the OHS. Similarly, the OEPA only has files digitized back to 2007; nothing directly related was found in that time period.

I'll start with one audio and one sheet music on general science and the scientific method, which could be used in most any lesson plan. We'll move to an audio on the Ohio Canal, relating to water resources in southern Ohio. Sheet music about bacteria can be a lead-in to our discussion about wastewater treatment. Finally, a short audio clip discussing some of the local politics of water supplies is available through a local radio station.

Start with Scientific State of Mind, a short song about how we want to think about the project. We could do a worksheet, probably NARA, for what ideas students come up with from this clip.

Sheet music for continues our lesson set-up. Near the end of the first stanza, we are even encouraged to "locate each primary source" of information.

How we used water supply to help develop Ohio is described in a narrative audio from the Teaching and Learning Cleveland center at CSU. This link will ideally be replaced with something similar, yet more directly related to Cincinnati and southwest Ohio.

Referring back to the technical diagram above in 4-C-1, this sheet music will help to explain some of the Good Bacteria that are used in the water treatment process.

Finally, I found a radio station with a regular show called "Explore Cincinnati." Episodes #12, 16, 35, and 49 have short clips on the Cincinnati Water Works. We'll focus on #12 (6:30 to 10:30). In those four minutes, we are introduced to the political option of privatizing our local water supply. Supporters explain how much money the city and its residents will save over the next 75 years. Detractors point out that a private company could raise the price of water at any time, simply to increase their profit margin We can discuss whether clean water is a commodity for the city to sell to the highest bidder, or whether citizen's have a right to clean water at a reasonable price, along with any of the related environmental issues.

== Learning Activity 6-D-1: Local Video and Maps ==

Water supply in the Cincinnati area is highly influenced by the Ohio River. One of the biggest events in local history was the 1937 flood, which is documented on a home video and also on a P&G video of the flooding of their Ivorydale Plant near downtown Cincinnnati.

The Ivorydale scenes are along the Mill Creek, which has perhaps the biggest short-term impact on local water supplies; it has been described as "the most endangered urban river in North America, both because of its history of hazardous industrial waste and raw sewage overflow, and its increasing population.

On a bigger picture, how has Cincinnati grown over the past two hundred years? Looking over a series of historical maps on this web site, focus on the earliest (1853) and the most recent (1921). In 1853, Cincinnati barely existed as a town, so we didn't need much in the way of water resources. By 1921, the growth is evident; even then, development is well short of our current population density and consequent water requirements.

On a bigger scale, we should also look at exactly how the water resources developed in the area. The Historical Atlas of Cincinnati summarizes the topography of the region and how the geologic and glacial history of the Midwest helped to form our tributaries and rivers in addition to our landscape itself. Present-day river management and environmental restoration is the focus of many groups at local, regional, and national levels. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers provides oversight on many civil works projects, ranging among flood and storm damage reduction, ecosystem restoration, water supply and regulatory permits.

== Additional Notes and Resources ==

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Cincinnati_Water_Works_building,_Eden_Park.jpg with photo in finder pictures.