Photo Credit: Alex Mead
Pictured above is the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant solids incinerator in Detroit, MI. This waste water plant is the largest of its kind in the United States. The three smoke stacks vent the incinerators that are used to burn the solids retrieved from the clarifiers. The smoke is actually a yellowish green and the smell surrounding the facility is nearly unbearable, which is typically why waste water plants are located away from large populations.
Photo Credit: Jessie Benaglio
The University of Michigan has configured a system to allow those passing by the central campus Diag to use the water from the fire hydrant. They have set up a filter to clean the water from the ground within the pipe of the fire hydrant and attached a drinking fountain and faucet attachment to access the water.
Photo Credit: Alex Mead
Seen here are two water towers on top of an abandoned factory in Detroit, Michigan. Water towers are used to input pressure, or head, into a water distribution system. Water towers are particularly good at this because water can be pumped up at an off demand time on the water distribution system and then retrieved by simply opening a valve when demand is high to ensure that water pressure in the system doesn’t fall too low. This is especially important for events such as fires where firemen draw large amounts of water from the system in a relatively short time. These water towers, however, were most likely used in a process involved in the factory, not for an entire city’s distribution system.
Photo Credit: Karl Jansen
Pictured here is a water tower located on the northside of Ann Arbor, MI. Water towers can be seen all over the world. The purpose of a water tower is to store water needed for the residents of the municipality that operates the tower. Usually located in a higher elevation in the area, this allows gravity to do the work in the municipality’s water distribution system.
Photo Credit: Alex Mead
Seen above is a fire hydrant dispelling what we all hope is there; water. A comforting feeling seems to come when we actually see that water does in fact come out of these commonly overlooked pieces of the built environment. Civil engineers have spent over a century constructing the infrastructure that makes fire hydrants such as this one work. Today this work continues as civil engineers of today strive to update our infrastructure to ever increasing standards of excellence.
Photo Credit: Alex Mead
Above is an example of the harsh conditions civil infrastructure must endure in northern states and places where long winter climates are a fact of life. As you can see the entire outside of this fire hydrant is covered in a layer ice! Ice is incredibly strong at prying apart seems, spreading cracks, and generally reeking havoc on anything man made. Any civil engineering infrastructure that is designed for northern climates must be made to handle forces such as those presented by ice.