What is LINK?
The Leading Internships for New Knowledge (LINK) program is an integral piece of the Animas High School curriculum in Durango, Colorado, as it exemplifies our belief in the value of student-centered, personalized instruction that connects learning to the adult world. LINK takes students beyond the classroom walls in order to clarify personal, college and career goals while teaching invaluable professional skills and life lessons.
With support from the LINK Internship Coordinator, students find internships either locally or further afield that allow them to dive deeply into their individual passions, interests and potential career paths. They are paired with LINK Mentors who generously share their time, energy and expertise. While on their internships, AHS juniors make meaningful contributions to their host businesses and organizations while also completing individual LINK Projects
With support from the LINK Internship Coordinator, students find internships either locally or further afield that allow them to dive deeply into their individual passions, interests and potential career paths. They are paired with LINK Mentors who generously share their time, energy and expertise. While on their internships, AHS juniors make meaningful contributions to their host businesses and organizations while also completing individual LINK Projects
Purgatory Metro District
Originally formed as the Purgatory Water and Sanitation District in 1969, the Purgatory Metropolitan District has been serving the community surrounding Purgatory Ski Area for over 40 years. The District provides central water and wastewater services, road maintenance and snow removal, as well as recreational facilities to a growing number of residents and guests. The District's mission is to provide high quality, cost effective and efficient services to our customer base. We are constantly monitoring our systems, procedures and programs to deliver on our promise.
The Project
My project with the Purgatory Metro District was an infiltration study up at Purgatory. Infiltration is when ground water gets into the sewage lines, which is not supposed to happen. This can happen when there are busted pipes underground, or leaking manhole covers and caps. Our goal was to find where the problem was and just how much infiltration Purgatory has at the moment. With such a large winter and major snow melt around this time of the year we were able to see just how much water there was flowing at this time of the year, and ideally there wouldn't be any water at this time of the year because there is no one at Purgatory at the moment. To figure out just how much infiltration there was we used special sensors that go into the sewage lines, these sensors can read the gallons per minute flowing through the lines. We placed these at strategic locations at the bottom of each system so we could gather a total amount of water flowing. What we found after 2 weeks of gathering data is that almost 80% of the total flow comes from groundwater at the moment. Below you can see a graph of what this looks like. The yellow and orange represent the GPM from the two manholes we put the sensors in and the green represents the two combined. Then the blue line is the total flow into the wastewater system they have at Purgatory