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SPRING 1998 |
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Turbidimeter Analysis System facilitates pond
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Stream cleaningA model of community pride
To people young and old who visited the stream and surrounding 100-acre woods one Saturday in the fall of 1995, a vivid contrast between past and present began to emerge. Kids who played in the area knew its foul disorder: trash of all types including tires and plastic jugs of crankcase oil; clots of unidentified chemical waste; two large sedans, rusty relics of the early '70s, moldering in muck. Older folks recalled times when Willow Creek was prettier and more hospitable to native deer, birds, rabbits and squirrels. Second-growth stands of fir, sassafras, oak and hickory were not much good for lumber, but they were perfect dwelling places for cardinals, blue jays and robins. Wood ducks skimmed the waterways. Brown trout and steelhead flicked in underwater shadows.
Follow-up work received scant attention until the following spring when teachers involved won a hefty grant. At a National Science Teachers Association meeting in Baltimore in November, fourth-fifth grade instructor Kathy Dempsey learned that for the first time elementary schools could compete for Toyota's well known "TAPESTRY" awards. Elsie Rogers Elementary School principal insisted that Dempsey try for one. She began writing on Christmas Eve, a month before the application deadline. "It's amazing what you will put on your wish list under those circumstances," Dempsey said recently, recalling the pressure and exhilaration she felt then. "We were already working with high school students on this, using them to buddy with our kids on water tests, and it was exciting to think what we could do with waders, life jackets, additional test kits and a microbiological incubator. We also wanted kids to see animals at night, so we listed infrared monoculars among our needs. And, so that students could pinpoint really raunchy chemical waste in the event the EPA took an interest, we added a hand-held Global Positioning Satellite unit." A trio of teachers was actually responsible for the winning proposal, which led to a $10,000 Toyota Tapestry award to fund the student project. Dempsey was helped by Dennis Addison, and by Mel Lenig, a high school agricultural science instructor who had used Hach kits for years. Lenig's high school students were so familiar with test procedures for nitrate, phosphate, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and coliform bacteria that they were easily introducing younger learners to water science. According to Lenig, Hach equipment is "the best there is." When word of the $10,000 Toyota Tapestry award reached the community, local support really began to pour in. Up until that time, teachers had relied on borrowed equipment, random donations, and popcorn sales. Businesses and conservation groups got involved. The youngsters received newspaper and television publicity. Indiana's natural resources department began working with the high school on a plan to restock Willow Creek with fingerling fish that students could trap and observe. When results came in, the stream's water was in better shape than it looked -- and perhaps better than it might have been. According to Dempsey, a maker of jet fuel tanks had used a field not far away to test liner materials that would self-seal the tanks if they were ruptured. "There could have been leaks out there," she says. The "Willow Creek Project" continues to be wonderfully positive. Parents like joining in maintenance cleaning and follow-up classroom work. Kids still love venturing outside and getting dirty while restoring the area to a more natural state. Trevor Eubank, one of a few farm kids in this largely suburban school, has found three years of science projects in the effort -- studying plant growth in clean-up site soil, in horse manure and in "bio-solids" from a sewage treatment plant. Also, Mishawaka has a model stream site. And water science has an attractive venue. "We are thrilled with the outcomes," says Dempsey.
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Stream cleaning
The "Sewage Sisters" and the BiocoilLiverpool
students help Ford Company
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Turbidimeter Analysis System
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Stream cleaningPocket
Turbidimeter Analysis System facilitates pond
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The "Sewage Sisters" and the BiocoilA parable for science-education grant writers
So the girls dialed, and that trans-Atlantic talk led to a novel approach to a bothersome pollution problem in their community. Cascade, a town of a thousand, is a hundred miles north of Boise in a valley that drains the south slope of the Salmon River Mountains. Its upstream neighbor is McCall, a community of 2,500 people that has a bit of difficulty with its sewage. Although McCall's treatment plant is typical for a community that size, the effluent runs high in phosphates and nitrates. Unfortunately, this nutrient-rich water flows into a picturesque lake that is well liked and economically important to people in both communities. "Students in our school program do limnology research," says biology teacher Clint Kennedy. "Cascade Reservoir is pretty heavily impacted, so it is a good site for that. Kids coming into our advanced biology class have taken courses in which they learn to do water tests, including those for dissolved oxygen, turbidity, fecal coliform and biological oxygen demand. Student measurements go into a data base at Eastern Idaho Technical College (EITC), and teachers help students interpret results in the classroom. Our more advanced learners go on from there. Some try to find funding for special projects in whatever way they can. That's how these students, who came to be known as the Sewage Sisters, got going. After talking with the English inventor of the Biocoil, they decided to take the idea to McCall town leaders."
Leery of an unproven technology, McCall officials raised tough questions in the beginning. Vancouver, British Columbia was the only place in North America where the inventor had a project, and that was not going as well as was anticipated. Before committing taxpayer money, decision makers in Idaho wanted a clear demonstration of the Biocoil's working potential. Young biologists learned hard lessons about politics. The Sewage Sisters, who tried for two years to get a coil approved and built, graduated before seeing that objective met. In meeting after meeting, however, they had stuck to their guns. In so doing they attracted attention. As a result, Cascade students eventually received $5,000 in a Phillips "Environmental Partner" Grant, $3,000 from the Lightfoot Foundation, $750 from Idaho Power, $650 from the Pacific Northwest Pollution Control Association (a group of wastewater engineers), and $500 from Simplot to pilot the equipment on the reservoir's inflow. They had financial and volunteer help from individuals as well. Additionally, with Kennedy's help in 1996, the project received a $10,000 Toyota TAPESTRY Award through the National Science Teachers Association. Students in later classes screwed pipes together, installed tanks, got the equipment wired, and introduced the algae. After seeing the English-built device on a trip to Vancouver, the students had a few design ideas of their own. To make it possible to try the equipment in different applications, they mounted the coil on a trailer. They also boxed it in clear plastic and installed a back-up heater so it could go through Cascade's sub-zero winters without freezing. In doing this the students had lots of help from area residents. Retired plumber Ben Wellington assisted with piping and drove to Boise for parts. An electrician whose son was taking advanced biology showed students how to wire in a timer and pH meter. And to meet the coil's need for electricity, he reconfigured junction boxes at McCall's sewage plant. "The neatest part of this is the connection to people," Kennedy says. "Students have discovered that there is real talent in the community. Seeing them develop working relationships with adults outside the school has been a wonderful experience for me as a teacher." As it turns out, after four years of tinkering with the Biocoil, students find their results less than ideal. "Our research so far shows that the coil does not remove phosphates at the rate claimed," Kennedy says. "It does better with nitrates but won't effectively remove a whole city's waste. It does help, though, and it has other potential uses -- pretreatment of septic systems, for example, and removal of unwanted salts from feed lot runoff. Our main purpose is educational, of course, and as a learning experience, the Biocoil is hard to beat." In this respect the results are long lasting. One Sewage Sister, writing wistfully from her college dorm, described the high school project in glowing terms. "I know it involved late nights of hard work, but I miss it so much," declared Dani Gahl. "I am doing similar things in college, but it's not the same. The class atmosphere is more or less one of 'who cares?' What we did in Cascade was exciting. We saw meaningful results from our efforts." Clearly, much of this educational success stems from the level of outside funding the project has drawn. Kennedy and his students have written proposals for various projects for eight years. In that time, they have learned the importance of basics...
While some teachers may believe that grant writing is "insanely difficult," Kennedy says it is not as hard as it seems. "It can be tough for teachers to find time to write proposals," he acknowledges, "and in some cases receiving a grant can create more pressure because the level of commitment needed to follow through on the program can be intimidating. However, if you take a team approach and have kids as motivated as ours have been, in some ways you just sit back and facilitate. It is tremendously rewarding for a teacher to be in that position." Hach products, incidentally, have played a role in these accomplishments. In determining the baseline quality of Cascade Reservoir water, students use Hach kits and standards. Also, the EITC data base is part of the so-called "SITE" network. The acronym stands for Students Investigating Today's Environment, a statewide association of teachers and students, all using Hach kits and sharing discoveries about local watersheds. "Quite a few of us in Idaho appreciate the quality and accuracy of Hach equipment," Kennedy says.
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Stream cleaningPocket
Turbidimeter Analysis System facilitates pond
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Liverpool students help Ford Company
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This page was last updated 08/16/06 |
When 4th and 5th
graders in Mishawaka, Indiana, decided to clean up a
messy watercourse near their school, they asked their
parents and grandparents to help.
Mishawaka is a city
of 50,000 not far from this undeveloped area. Saddened at
what the place had become, the student clean-up crew set
to work -- and rather than go in with a tractor or
4-wheel drive vehicle to remove debris (an approach that
would break saplings), they used draft horses pulling a
lightweight mud boat. In this manner they hauled off many
loads of refuse.
The $23,000 adventure
began with a blip in National Biology. When four girls in
a rural high school in central Idaho read the blurb about
the Biocoil (an English invention for treating water), a
light came on. All four had the idea at the same time.
"Let's call England," one said.
"Yes!" said another. "Why not?" 
The
"Biocoil" is a circular system of clear plastic
tubing through which nutrient-rich water is pumped. In
the version of the apparatus that students from Cascade
Junior/Senior High School eventually built, the stack of
windings receives halogen illumination from within and on
the outside is exposed to the sun. This intense lighting
fires photosynthetic reactions in chlorella, an
aggressive strain of algae that is put into the tubes to
consume phosphates and nitrates as it grows. The
resulting "bloom"of tiny plants moves into
settling tanks. A pump takes purified water near the top
of the tanks back to the North Fork of the Payette River,
which runs into the reservoir. The sediment is taken out
for livestock feed. 
Four straight-A students from the Halewood
Community Comprehensive School in Liverpool, England,
recently solved a serious problem for Ford Company's
oil-effluent treatment plant. The team of students were
invited to help Ford Company, located just two miles from
their school, reduce their operating overheads while
improving the environment at the same time. The
challenge? Ford needed to find a way to reclaim more oil
for re-use from an effluent carrying a highly variable
oil content.