WATER WAYS!
PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN MONTRÉAL, FROM THE 17TH TO THE 21ST CENTURIES
WATER WAYS! EXERCISE
Spark your students’ interest in the subject of everyday water management and in their upcoming trip to the Museum.
Competencies developed:
- Competencies developed:
- Competencies developed:
- Student Water Ways! sheet
- 15 minutes
- Hand out the Water Ways! sheet to the students, or use it to lead a discussion and prepare for your trip to the Museum.
Answers: 17th-century Montrealers fetched their water with a bucket from a river or well. Today, we get our drinking water from a tap. In the 17th century, each Montrealer used 10 to 17 litres of water a day, about one or two buckets. They dumped their waste and wastewater in the street or directly into the rivers. Today, water mains are pipes that bring drinking water directly to our homes. The sewer system takes wastewater away from our homes. - Talk with your students about water consumption today, in comparison with 17th-century habits, and the problems caused by wastewater. At the Museum, the interpreter-guide will lead you deep into the subject and answer any questions your students may have raised during the discussion in class.
Ask your students what they thought about their trip to the Museum. Did they enjoy it? What did they learn?
FOR or AGAINST EXERCISE
Ask your students to use what they learned during their visit to the Museum in a debate on the future impact of the way we manage water today.
Competencies developed:
- Use information
- Exercise critical judgment
- Communicate appropriately
- For or against? sheet
- 30 minutes for the debate, plus time for the students to prepare
Pressure gauge from the Youville Pumping Station / PAC 1998.5
© www.lucbouvrette.com
Instructions:
- Ask the students to answer the questions on the sheet that the guide gave them at the Museum. This is an opportunity to review what they learned during their visit.
- In the What about me? section of the sheet, the students are asked how water management can be improved today. Suggest that they hold a debate on one of the solutions that we’ve been hearing a lot about lately: making people pay for the water they use. It’s very costly to manage water and sewer mains, and especially to maintain them. We also want to protect this valuable natural resource and avoid wasting water. Would the students be willing to pay for the water they use every day? Are they in favour of bottled water? Are they for or against paying for the water they use every day?
Prepare for the debate:
- Form two teams: one in favour of paying for the water they use, and the other opposed to this idea. Decide which team is for and which is against by flipping a coin.
- Have the students prepare their arguments by referring to the ideas suggested in the For or against? sheet. Suggest that they approach the issue from a number of viewpoints: historical, technological, economic, social, environmental, etc.
- To make sure that all the students are included in the debate, you can assign different jobs to subgroups on each team. For example, some of them can be the speakers, others can present a skit before the debate to explain their team’s point of view and yet others can illustrate a few of their team’s key arguments.
Moderate the debate:
- The moderator gives each team equal time to present its arguments for or against, and then allows each team to rebut the other’s arguments. At the end, each team has one minute to sum up.
- The moderator then asks all the students (and the audience, if you wish) to write down how they feel about the topic: are they for or against the idea of paying for the water they use? The winning team is the one that gets the most support.
| STUDENT: |
| GROUP: |
© Francis Back
Ville-Marie, 1642. Here you can see the first Montrealers building their homes. They didn’t have any bathrooms, or even running water! How did 17th-century Montrealers get the water they needed?
Compare:
Today, we turn on the t _ _ to get as much hot or cold clean water as we want.
How much water did a 17th-century Montrealer use every day at home?
Compare:
Today, we each consume about 330 litres a day. In the United States, people use about 380 litres, and in France, 150 litres.
In the 17th century, there was no garbage collection and no sewer system to take away waste and wastewater. What did Montrealers do with their waste?
Just imagine the garbage piling up ... it can’t have been very healthy! Not to mention the smell ...
What's the difference?
A water main is a set of pipes that brings d water directly to people’s homes. The sewer system takes w water away from people’s homes.
At Pointe-à-Callière, the Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History, you’ll learn about Montrealers’ ingenious solutions over the years to obtain drinking water ... and dispose of their wastewater! You’ll even get to step inside a former sewer pipe.
It’s fRATscinating!
Did you know that Montréal was the second city in North America, after Philadelphia in the United States, to create a drinking water supply system, in 1800?
Are you for or against the idea of making people pay for the water they use every day?
To prepare your arguments for the debate, gather information from a number of sources. Look at the issue from different viewpoints: historical, economic, social, technological, environmental, etc. Try to predict the other team’s arguments, so that you can be ready to counter them. Remember to offer your own solutions – ways of conserving this precious natural resource.
Here are some ideas to inspire you:
Think about the different ways we use water every day. Would making people pay for water reduce waste? What are some possible ways of making people pay for the water they waste?
How much water gets used every time you:
- Flush the toilet: 18 litres
- Take a shower: 100 litres
- Take a bath: 60 litres
- Brush your teeth: 10 litres
- Wash the dishes by hand: 35 litres
- Use the dishwasher: 30 litres
http://www.ec.gc.ca/WATER/en/info/pubs/brochure/e_IWDWW8.pdf
In Montréal, households account for 20% of total water consumption, while factories and institutions account for 33% and municipal use, 47%.
Source: S.O.S. Water! Coalition. Coalition québécoise pour une gestion responsable de l’eau.
The Myth of Water Meters. http://www.eausecours.org/anglophone/Divers/boutwatermeter.pdf
Water meters are instruments that measure the amount of water used. That way, municipalities can bill users for the amount of water they consume every day. The more water you use, the more you pay.
Some people and organizations claim that installing water meters in factories, institutions, businesses and homes would help to reduce waste, since users would pay according to how much they use.
Source: Infrastructure Canada. The Importance of Water Metering and Its Uses in Canada
http://www.infc.gc.ca/research-recherche/results-resultats/rn-nr/rn-nr-2005-06-eng.html
Other people and organizations feel that installing water meters in homes would not be fair, in part because it would penalize low-income families. They think that people should be made aware of the importance of using water wisely, and that a system of fines should be adopted, for instance for people who use their hoses to clean their paved driveways.
Source: S.O.S. Water! Coalition. Coalition québécoise pour une gestion responsable de l’eau.
The myth of water meters. http://www.eausecours.org/anglophone/Divers/boutwatermeter.pdf
Here are some ways to reduce water consumption at home:
- Replace a 14-litre toilet tank with a 6-litre model:
saves 44 to 74 litres of water per person per day. - Replace a top-loading washing machine with a front-loading model:
saves 15 to 23 litres per day per person. - Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth or shaving:
saves up to 20 litres per day per person. - Install a low-flow shower head:
saves 20 litres per day per person.
The myth of water meters. http://www.eausecours.org/anglophone/Divers/boutwatermeter.pdf
The city of Montréal is planning to install water meters in industrial and institutional buildings and in businesses by 2013, since they use a large proportion of the city’s water.
Source: City of Montréalhttp://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/page/eau_potable_en/rep_compteurs_ici/mesure_consommation_eau.shtm
Some people and organizations feel that installing water meters in homes will pave the way for the privatization of water.
Source: S.O.S. Water! Coalition. Coalition québécoise pour une gestion responsable de l’eau.
The myth of water meters.http://www.eausecours.org/anglophone/Divers/boutwatermeter.pdf
It costs a lot to manage water and maintain water mains. Who should pay?
AIn early 19th-century Montréal, only those homeowners who could afford it had water delivered directly to their homes. They hired a private company and paid 3 pounds a year for this service – the equivalent of 2 to 3 weeks’ work for a labourer. The first customers were wealthy businesspeople.
Source: Pothier, Louise, dir. L’eau, l’hygiène publique et les infrastructures. Montréal, Groupe PGV Diffusion de l’archéologie, 1996.
EIn 1845, the city of Montréal took over the water supply system from a private company. The company wasn’t earning enough money to provide the service, maintain the system and turn a profit. The city made the service mandatory in the following decade, so as to spread the cost among a larger number of users. With the money it raised, it was able to extend the water mains to different neighbourhoods.
Source: Fugères, Dany. L’approvisionnement en eau à Montréal. Du privé au public. 1759-1865. Montréal, Les Éditions du Septentrion, 2004.
Today, homeowners in most municipalities pay a water tax for water and sewer service.
Source: S.O.S. Water! Coalition. Coalition québécoise pour une gestion responsable de l’eau.
The myth of water meters. http://www.eausecours.org/anglophone/Divers/boutwatermeter.pdf
Just treating wastewater alone costs the city of Montréal over $50 million a year.
Source: City of Montréal http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=916,1607872&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
The Montréal water main system has over 5,000 km of pipes, or just slightly more than the distance from Montréal to Vancouver.
Source: City of Montréal http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/page/environnement_fr/media/documents/Depliant-prod-final-F.pdf
Are you in favour of buying bottled water for your daily needs?
In North America, the number of bottles of water purchased every day has skyrocketed. Nearly one person in five drinks only bottled water. In Canada, close to one billion litres of water are sold every year.
Source: Inside the Bottle: An Exposé of the Bottled Water Industry - Tony Clarke, Polaris Institute, Ottawa, 2005 Polaris Institute, The economic impacts of bottled water http://www.insidethebottle.org/files/Economic%20Impacts.pdf
Over 25% of the bottled water on the market is simply filtered tap water. This costs hundreds of times more than the water you can get at home.
SSource: Inside the Bottle: An Exposé of the Bottled Water Industry - Tony Clarke, Polaris Institute, Ottawa, 2005 Polaris Institute, The economic impacts of bottled water
http://www.insidethebottle.org/files/Economic%20Impacts.pdf
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