Jake Slobe | December 12, 2016
This week’s On The Radio segment discusses the St. Louis sewer system model built by University of Iowa researchers and engineers.
Transcript: The University of Iowa IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering recently revealed its completed model of a sewer system that will soon be built in St. Louis.
This is the Iowa Environmental Focus.
The purpose of the model is to study and evaluate the hydraulics of a system that’s being designed and built for the city of St. Louis to intercept excess storm water. The current system in St. Louis, despite its large size, still allows flooding to occur during storms.
The new system is designed differently, it reduces the air in sewer systems by swirling the water around a vertical tube before dropping it into another chamber. Then, after the storm has passed, that water is pumped out, treated, and discharged.
When finished, the system should be able to handle about 4.4 billion gallons of rainwater per day. The large size is intended to accommodate for large areas of concrete in St. Louis which results in excessive runoff and more water flooding into the city’s storm sewer system.
For more information about the project, visit iowaenvironmentalfocus.org.
From the UI Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, I’m Betsy Stone.
