I ended up enjoying the circle line trip much more than I anticipated. I’m sure everyone can agree that waking up to commute into the city on a Saturday was not the most exciting thing, but my mood turned around almost instantly. Once we were on the boat, the weather changed from cloudy and cool to sunny and warm, and I really started to enjoy being on the boat sailing around Manhattan. That actually ties into what the first speaker was talking about: using our senses and thinking about where we are and what we are. So the first thing I’d like to comment on about the trip was how great it was to be on the boat and enjoy all the views of Manhattan, Jersey City, the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn, and all the bridges we saw. Sailing around the city gave a new perspective and new views that I don’t often get to see. Being on the boat was also really significant to what we were talking about. I think having the circle line trip is a really successful idea for the sustainable systems class because while you are learning about the water systems, you are also getting to see them. The entire time the speakers were giving out information, we were sailing around and passing the things they were talking about. It gave a much better perspective than just learning about it from the inside of a classroom. The second speaker talked about Hurricane Sandy. having lived in New York my whole life, I remember Hurricane Sandy, but I was still pretty young when they both hit, the speaker taught me things I didn’t know about Sandy, like how the Battery Tunnel filled, 48 people died, there was a major power outage because of flooding at major power plants, Brooklyn and Staten Island flooded, and subway stations flooded. With these super storms and climate change, people need to think about what to do when all this water comes. We learned that you can’t keep it out, so the only thing you can do is let it in and deal with it by rebuilding and expanding wetland areas and using natural sponges. We also learned about water samples, and how the weather effects the cleanliness of the water. When it rains, all of our wastewater ends up in our surrounding water systems because the rain diverts it from making it to our water treatment plants. On the trip we also saw CSO’s and digester eggs. We also learned that NYC consumes 1.1 billion gallons of water a day, and 6,000 miles of piping bring us our water from the 19 reservoirs in the Katskills to the 7,400 miles of sewer pipe in the city. All our wastewater goes to the 14 wastewater treatment plants in the city.
