Caring for our Rivers - Part 1

Today we continued our work as jr. environmental scientists who study human impacts. We started the first step of our project to help protect our rivers. We learned from Judy at Yellow Fish Road that pollution from our streets, yards, and cars can end up in the storm sewer system and then goes directly into our rivers. This pollution causes lots of problems for the plants and animals that live in or near our rivers and also affects the quality of drinking water for people.  Here is a video from the presentation that Ms. Boyer forgot to post:

As jr. environmental scientists we are following this process: (1)Background research (2) Identify a problem (3) Gather evidence and make observations (4) Develop solutions (5) Implement a plan. Our plan is to raise awareness about the problem of storm drain pollution by painting yellow fish and "rain water only" messages beside the storm drains in our neighbourhood to remind people to be careful about what they put down the storm drains.

Today our first step was to head out into the neighbourhood to count the storm drains and to make observations about the condition of the drains and streets. To do this work we split up into 5 groups. Each group went with a teacher and was assigned one or two streets to explore. We explored: Benton Drive, Bannerman Drive, Barrett Drive and Barrett Place, Brenner Drive and Brenner Crescent, and Breton Close. Each group had a map and an observation page where we could mark down the storm drain locations and write about any evidence we saw.  In total we counted 43 storm drains. When we came back in to the school we shared our observations and then we started writing about this project in our Fresh Air Friday journals. Here are a few of the observations we made:
- Some of the drains already have yellow fish, but most of them are very faded and need to be repainted.
- Some of the drains had garbage beside them or even in them.
- We noticed that there was a lot more garbage at storm drains that were near busier streets like 52 Ave.
- We noticed some cars that were leaking oil. That oil will end up going into the storm drain the next time it rains.
- We noticed that lots of the storm drains were placed at the bottom of hills or at the end of streets.
- We noticed that storm sewers and man-hole covers were often found close to each other.
- We think that there might be pipes or tunnels under the streets that connect all the storm drains together.

Our next step is to plan out painting day. We will let you know when we have set the date as we will need quite a few parent volunteers to help us with this project. 

On Monday our helper is: Lily

p.s A few discoveries we made along the way today:

Crocuses in the Whispering Woods