Today we finally started to figure out what to do about the contamination in Fruitvale.  A large area of the town has been affected; the good news is that the pesticide has not hit the town wells yet.

The clean-up options are containment, excavation, excavations and incineration, pumping & dumping, or the experimental electrification.  Right off the bat, we can tell you, none of the options are ideal.

Every student was given a role to play in the upcoming town meeting.  Some students are acting as representatives of companies that want Fruitvale to adopt the method they sell.  Other students are acting as audience members with particular and strong points of view.  Without knowing each other’s roles, students will come together for a more realistic, rather than scripted, town meeting.

Before talking about the clean-up methods, we practiced measuring plume maps to calculate the amount of time it would take for a plume to reach a well.  This is a unit rate calculation, and practice makes perfect.