No Dumping, Drains to Stream!

On one of the few fair-weather days we had this May, I joined 6^th graders from Valley Park Middle School (VPMS) for their Fishpot Field Day. Organized by Darlene Haun and VPMS science teacher Ms. Leslie Venn, this water quality-centric field day grew out of Ms. Venn's class' involvement with Stream Teams; Stream Team #3271 at VPMS has adopted Fishpot Creek, and they've been learning about it throughout the year.

In January, and those of you that read these blogs closely may remember this post, several other AmeriCorps members and I helped Darlene test for chlorides along Fishpot. We then visited Ms. Venn’s classroom to show her students how road salt had found its way into the water, and to teach them a little about the negative consequences of increased chlorides on the stream.

The Fishpot Field Day took place at several sites along the stream. I was with the group furthest upstream at Mockingbird Park, located at the back of a subdivision. There were three volunteers at the site that helped to conduct several activities: Tom Ball took care of visual survey, chemistry and flowrate in Fishpot, John Ruprecht led the kids on a plant identification walk, and I was in charge of storm drain stenciling (which was the most fun, if you ask me!).

All of the kids got a chance to rotate through and do all three of the activities. With each group of kids, I first asked them to imagine what would happen to the rain if there had been nothing built. Most kids eventually got it right—that most of the water would soak into the ground, and some would evaporate, and a little goes into the stream. Then I asked them to take a look at the subdivision and tell me what would happen to the stormwater now that we’d built all these houses and roads and sidewalks. They put together that most of the water goes down the storm drain and straight to the stream, and that all the stuff that’s on roads goes into the stream with it.

Once the kids understood why dumping things down the storm drain is a bad idea, we then set off with our trusty cans of spray paint to stencil some storm drains. We broke into three smaller groups: two groups of two kids that stenciled storm drains, and one group of three that went door to door dropping off fliers that explained why we were stenciling the storm drains. We also kept track of the things we saw around the storm drains that would go into the stream the next time it rained: sticks, leaves, pine needles, rocks, and fertilizer from an immaculately groomed lawn. One storm drain was almost completely blocked from organic waste.

It was so great to see all the energy the kids had—one particularly enthusiastic kid ran to every house to drop off a flier. I hope that through the kids' efforts, people in the neighborhood will notice the fliers and stencils on the storm drains and not dump their dog poop or yard waste in storm drains. It's a small step in helping to protect Fishpot, but we sure had a lot of fun with it!