Katie Joy, recon team, McMurdo, 13^th December 2012

The recon team is due to deploy to the field tomorrow if the weather holds up for us. We have been kicking our heals in McMurdo Station since the main team left, and today we had the opportunity to learn more about how this remote outpost operates and is kept running on a day to day basis.

McMurdo Station, named after Archibald McMurdo who was part of the 1841 exploration mission commanded by James Ross, is the largest community in Antarctica and is home to about 1000 people in the summer and about 100-200 in the winter months. McMurdo’s townfolk consist of a wide range of people who keep the Station operating and provide logistical support for scientists, like us ANSMET folks, who come to Antarctica for a wide range of different research projects each year. Residents include people who work in the galley to cook us all the great food we are very fond of, folks that provide technical support for shipping cargo and preparing snowmobiles, Peggy who works in the field party food room to help us prepare for remote camping, the ladies in the Berg Field Center who help prepare our camping equipment, recreation support staff like Kevin who took our group on a tour of Scott’s Discovery Hut and the pressure ice ridges near Scott Base, the volunteers who step up to man the library and the coffee house making us lovely hot chocolate in the evenings, and who drive shuttle buses to Scott Base and back… the list of great folks just goes on and on. Many of those who work here come back year after year and we have been fortunate to meet many of those who help to make McMurdo run smoothly, and who help to make life in the community an enjoyable experience.

Today Joe, Tomoko and I went on a tour of the arteries of McMurdo with Paul who works in the water distillation plant. Paul showed us how drinking water is produced so that people here have fresh water always on tap. The plant uses seawater taken from McMurdo Sound, and uses a process of reverse osmosis where seawater is filtered at very high pressure through a series of membranes to remove the salt particles from the clean water (these have four large white cylinders full of membranes). Each of the three huge machines used for this process can filter around 40000 gallons of drinkable water each day, and sometimes two machines are run at a time to keep up with demand of the town. Fresh water is stored in four 50000 gallon tanks, and then after a small amount of Ca and Cl is added to keep the water clean and tasting nice, distributed around the town as needed. About 50000 gallons of water is used per day in the summer months! When we are in the field we will make our drinking water by melting locally available ice, so it was really impressive to see such a large scale operation in effect.

We also visited the other end of the water management process – the waste water facility which deals with waste flushed down the toilet. The waste water is treated, solid waste concentrated and removed to be shipped off the continent, and clean waste water discharged safely. The plant wasn’t as stinky as you would think it might be, and the whole process was an impressive feat of engineering designed to minimise the impact of McMurdo’s population on the local environment. When we are in the field – it isn’t very glamorous – we contain our waste in buckets that we will bring back for safe disposal. We will miss the luxury of flushing toilets once we leave town!

We also got to see how power is generated to keep everyone in McMurdo warm, and with electricity to run our lights and electronic equipment. In the field we have portable solar panels that we will use to generate electricity to keep our computers and satellite phones going, and we use propane stoves to keep our stoves working for heat and cooking. In McMurdo power is generated on a bit of a different scale – there are three large wind turbines that run on the local hillside and several huge diesel powered generators that step up to take on more power needs when the wind drops. We met Sarah, one of the electricity managers who explained the system, and saw the huge generator room which is incredibly noisy (ear protection a requirement – see us in the photo!) and heat exchange devices for warming the systems which keep our dorms and the science lab nice and toasty.

The whole tour was very interesting and has helped us better grasp the complex logistics that go into helping us survive in comfort out in Antarctica. Without these utility arteries running smoothly and manned by such a good team McMurdo would be a much less pleasant place to be staying. We are hugely grateful for Paul’s time and enthusiasm, and for giving us a great insight to how McMurdo Station runs so smoothly.

We hope to hit the field tomorrow, so hopefully the next recon team blog post will be from the ice…

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