Drink Week Day 2

We began our journey to follow drinking water by traveling upstream to the Mississippi River at River Park where we met Rena Weiss, from Wenck who does watershed education about the rain garden at River Park along the Mississippi River. You can see our pictures of River Park in our story map HERE.

In the water bottles we decorated, we collected water from the Mississippi River to join us on our journey.

We met Jodi Wallin and Alex Rossow of St. Paul Regional Water Services who showed us the Intake building across the river and described how they collect the river water there to go into the lakes and then the water treatment plant.

After the intake building, we visited Sucker Lake. We learned that the water goes through underground pipes and to a chain of lakes: Charles, Pleasant, Sucker, and Vadnais. After lunch, Nick Voss, from the Vadnais Lakes Area Water Management Organization (VLAWMO) told us about protecting the water and showed us some of the animals that live in the water and how we can tell how clean the water is by how many of them we find.

Finally we went to the St. Paul Regional Water Services Water Treatment Plant for a tour from Jodi and Jeremy.

Clarifier room at the Water Treatment Plant