Maddie Brouse: Helping people assess and clean well water following flooding
The following story was written in April 2018 by Antonia Baker in ENGL 4824: Science Writing as part of a collaborative project that included the English department, the Center for Communicating Science, the Fralin Life Science Institute, and Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies (TLOS).
While we drink water every day, not everybody is certain whether or not their water is actually safe for consumption. Luckily there are individuals like Maddie Brouse, who help ensure people know their water is safe to drink.
As a first year master’s student at Virginia Tech, Brouse has dedicated her research to exploring wells of private owners after hurricanes and flooding. As part of the civil and environmental engineering program, Brouse has developed a project to better understand what happens when floodwater enters a well after natural disasters. From Louisiana to North Carolina to Virginia to Michigan, Brouse has reached out to different communities and extended her fieldwork to various parts of the country.
Brouse’s current research is not her first experience working on important water projects to help communities. In 2014, citizens of Flint, Michigan, brought attention to the noticeably strange taste, smell, and appearance of their water. It turned out that their concerns were valid, as the water had been insufficiently treated due to cost-cutting measures. By 2015, a team from Virginia Tech tested the water in Flint and detected dangerously high lead levels that rendered the water unsuitable for drinking and cooking.
Brouse happened to be part of this team, and the time she spent interacting with the community and with researchers regarding the presence and the effects of the contaminants in the water affected her plans for the future. After witnessing the detrimental impact that the water had on individuals, educational systems, and the community as a whole, Brouse was inspired to continue her pursuit of ensuring certain communities had clean water.
While Brouse summarizes her research as “sampling the well to see what is in the floodwater, and how much of it is in there,” the execution of the process is intricate. The project is broken down into two phases.
The first phase aims to understand the composition of the floodwater by using chemical and microbial analysis techniques and then comparing that information to previous data from the same well.
The second phase consists of pumping the water out of the well to observe changes in the water over time to determine a usable method for cleaning wells after flooding. The entire process requires a wide range of duties, from performing chemical and bacterial analysis to writing and communicating with well owners.
While Brouse is responsible for ensuring that everything gets done, she stresses the importance of being in a collaborative research group and the contributions of others that make the project possible. She is appreciative of the “great guidance that [she has] from her advisors both academic and in the lab.”
“My primary goal is to make sure that people are aware of their water quality and have resources to help get their water quality back to where it should be so they can drink it again,” Brouse said. “This [project] is like my baby.”
With the future in mind, Brouse hopes to shed light on issues regarding well water quality to the government, as it remains a topic not well addressed by the public. She also hopes to increase the amount of resources available to well owners to allow them the most efficient access to clean drinking water. Since Brouse’s experience in Flint led her to her current work, she is driven to communicate the importance of water quality and the impact that it can have on people’s lives and health.
“I hope that my research will make people more aware of their water quality, more willing to test their water, and go more into things they don’t know about,” Brouse said.