A Day Without Water

On Oct. 7, Junior Achievement (JA) and the Metro Water Infrastructure Partnership (MWIP) sought to make the invisible meaningful to 80 fifth grades students from Kennard Classical Junior Academy in St. Louis.

When students arrived for their second day at JA's BizTown, there was a surprise waiting for them. Water and sewer main "breaks" meant that they were about to experience a day without water.

JA calls BizTown a "working free enterprise community" where each student experiences the responsibilities of running a business and acting as a consumer, saver, investor, and citizen within a "mini-municipality" of 17 public and private enterprises. The "town" includes retail shops, a bank, a stock brokerage, a newspaper, and a restaurant, in addition to utilities, city hall, and a post office.

Before students arrived for the day, field crews from MSD and Missouri American Water set-up trucks and equipment outside the JA building and pumped water to simulate a water main break. Students had to cross the work area to enter BizTown.

The students were told that the building had lost water and sewer service. They had already successfully operated the businesses in BizTown the previous day, but now they had a new challenge: operate the businesses and municipality without water or sewer service. The aim was to teach them the importance of something they take for granted: water and wastewater service.

"They'll have the normal Junior Achievement agenda, but in addition, they'll have to cope without water," said Terry Gloriod, president of MWIP.

At first, students did not see the lack of water as a problem. "It won't matter," said Toni Thomas, who was filling the position of CFO at Ameren-Peabody Energy in BizTown. "We'll just use port-a-potties if we have to use the rest room," she said.

Mar-Naye Whittaker, who played the role of store manager at Build-A-Bear, agreed that the loss of water and sewer service "was not a problem" for businesses.

Isabella Peterson, however, thought it might be a problem for some "employees." Peterson played a sales clerk at Build-A-Bear. "I didn't bring anything to drink," she said. "And my pay is so low at Build-A-Bear, I can't afford to buy water."

MWIP, the co-sponsor of the activity, is a newly formed coalition of bi-state area water utilities and professional associations, whose goal is to advance community conversations about the importance of drinking water and wastewater systems to the quality of life for residents of the greater St. Louis metropolitan area.

Lance LeComb, public affairs director for MSD, said the groups came together on October 8, 2009 to sponsor the broadcast of "Liquid Assets" on KETC-TV. In the coming months, they intend to launch more public outreach efforts to extend the discussion about how the metro area's drinking water and wastewater systems function and the funding needed to maintain and rehabilitate them.

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