October 31, 2002: Here are scenes from the Lake Blalock Water Filtration Plant. This is where our drinking water comes from!

Graham Rich, General Manager of the Spartanburg Water System and the Spartanburg Sanitary Sewer District, and Jim Foster, plant supervisor, facilitated our tour.

Graham began with a discussion about bottled water. Most often it is filled with water as clean and pure as what comes from your tap (it's likely not even as good as Spartanburg water, especially if it comes from a source "downstream" which has likely been through an upstream city's sewage treatment plant), but you pay a lot more for it. We tend to take clean water for granted in the United States, but a lot of highly trained and dedicated workers are behind the scenes providing us with this precious resource.

Jim Foster is on the left and Graham Rich is on the right.		Jim explains that chlorine is added to water coming into the plant to kill bacteria, and ...		alum is added to form "floc," the whitish clumps in the water above. As the water and alum (along with a synthetic polymer) are mixed in the...
floculator (shown above) by a submerged fan, the alum binds to suspended particles in the water and these now heavy particles can be separated...		from the water in the plate settlers, shown above. After this, the water is filtered water and receives additional treatments before....		it is stored in this giant holding tank.
		Look at the size of the pipes that carry the water away from the plant to be distributed throughout Spartanburg!