Water Works Park is a water treatment facility on Detroit since 1879. The plant produces up to 240 million gallons of water per day and it is the largest plant in Michigan to use ozone, a disinfectant more potent than chlorine.[1]
Coverage[]
Water Works Park is featured in Roads to Nowhere.
In 4 days after people, some machines are still humming at Water Works Park located 4 miles east of downtown on the banks of the Detroit River, even though power plants begin to fail worldwide. John McGrail stated that once it have the main power failure, it'll switch over to generator power. The diesel fuel powering the generators would last for 2 more days and business would be as usual at the waterworks even without people, with the electronic boards at the system control room continue to keep track of the half a billion gallons of water filling the city's pipes. However, after people, catastrophe looms become there's no one around to turn on a faucet. Cheryl Porter stated that it'll pump water into the system that's not being used and so eventually, it'll max out the capacity of the pipes.
The weakest link of the system: the pipes.
Underneath downtown Detroit are the 4 foot diameter pipes dating back to the 19th century and are the weakest links in the system. It sent water to Detroit through the birth of the Model T, the rise of the Big Three, and the collapse of manufacturing but the pipes are finished with their tour of history. Cheryl Porter stated that it would be completely full and start to burst. Compounding the disaster are clay soil, which much of downtown Detroit stands on. John McGrail stated that clay is impervious to the flow of water so while it saturate the clay, it have a tendency to go up while George Ellenwood stated that pressure continues building, pushing up the sidewalk and street until it buckles. With the pipes buckles, 10 foot high fountains have turn the streets of Detroit, including 221 Gatroit Avenue, into thoroughfares of water.
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