Solving Environmental Problems through Engineering

Introduction:

I hate spring in Chicago. As measured by the number of days of precipitation, spring in Chicago is the wettest time of the year in the city. It is at this point on the calendar that winter and summer begin to converge. Up above the clouds, strong streams of air still hold their winter frost. Down below on the ground, the spring sun begins to warm the surface area of water, and earth. The warm air rising meets up with the cold air which leads to precipitation. The months of April (with 12.6 days of measurable precipitation) and March (with 12.4 days of measurable precipitation) lead the way in rainfall.

As a homeowner living in Chicago I’ve come to dread rainy days. The prospect of waking up in the morning and finding water on my basement floor was frustrating and maddening. A couple of years back after a devastating downpour, our basement looked like a small lake. We hired a plumber who promptly ripped out our basement floor, replaced our soaked drywall with moisture resistant sheetrock , dug out rusted, rotted out water pipes with new ones, and replaced a broken water sump pump with a new fancy one thinking we were now in the clear. Then we hired workers to excavate the perimeter of our house digging a good four of five feet down to the foundation patching and filling cracks on the building’s walls with tar and sealers of all sorts. Nope. The water still came, in trickles through the walls and up through the drains on the floor. Sometimes it is pointless fighting with Mother Nature. Thousands of homes in the Chicago area of affected by flooding caused by storm water runoff yearly. Flood losses in the city and suburbs cost taxpayers $1.8 billion in subsidized grants, loans, and insurance payments between 2004 and 2014, according to a report released by the National Academy of Sciences. Only hurricane ravaged areas of coastal Louisiana, New York and Texas received more federal flood aid during the decade.¹ As climate change impacts the world, the effect of broadening use of impervious surfaces throughout the area and record breaking rainfall contribute to increases in storm water runoff flooding will continue to be a major challenge in Chicago. The region remains vulnerable despite $3.8 billion spent on one of the most expensive public works projects in the country: the Deep Tunnel, a labyrinth of cavernous underground pipes connected to massive reservoirs intended to “bottle up rainstorms” and keep Chicago and Cook County suburbs dry.¹ The tunnel project is still not finish, having begun construction in the 1970’s with an approximate completion date of 2029. According to the National Climate Assessment, in the Midwest part of the United States precipitation has increased with more severity and frequency since 1901 and is to continue until the end of this century. Over the past two centuries Chicago has been challenged in the way it manages flooding. To begin with, the city was built upon swamps and as plains of soil and pasture were replaced with pavements and other impervious surfaces such as concrete and asphalt continued increases in water runoff contributed to flooding. As precipitation runs off into three places: the city’s sewers, the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. Chicago sewers are outdated and were designed not only to manage storm water runoff but also to deal with waste from factories and homes as well. With heavy precipitation, sewers are overwhelmed to their capacity leading to not only water flooding basements, release of sewage to the natural environment. The goal of this unit is to use math concepts such as geometry to measure areas of surfaces while identifying pervious and impervious surfaces in a city. The area my students will be measuring will be the surrounding surface areas of Edwards Elementary including pavements, sidewalks, parking lots, buildings, playgrounds, and soccer fields. This area will be the city block the school is located on. My students will learn how areas of pervious and impervious surfaces can be measured using the lengths and widths of rectangular surface areas. My students will use proportions and rates to measure rainfall and water runoff by organizing data on tables.

Student Demographics:

My school Richard Edwards IB Dual Language Elementary is a part of Chicago School District #299. Edwards has one of the largest elementary student populations in Chicago with an enrollment of approximately 1,500 students. The demographics of the school are: Hispanic 95.8%, White 1.6% and Black 1.2% with an approximate amount of 90% of the student enrollment are low income, 51.6% are limited English proficient, and 15% are diverse learners. There will be approximately 75 seventh grade students I will be teaching bilingual math in the upcoming school year.