A RAIN GARDEN A DAY KEEPS THE DIRT AWAY

2016, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
A rain garden a day keeps the dirt away
The Mill Creek, one of Cincinnati’s main waterways, has a water quality that is often defined as ‘fair’ or ‘poor’ due to the large amounts of contaminants that runoff into it. Aleeyah Nurredin’s high school, Mount Notre Dame, is next door to a convent with a stream that runs into the Mill Creek. To prevent the problem of damaging runoff, she proposed to create a rain garden. This garden would increase the water quality and reduce the flooding potential into the stream by the convent too.

This project would engage the larger MND community, collaborating with students to create the garden itself while educating residents of the convent next door. A rain barrel would first be installed after a group digs up a space for the garden, diverting water from the gutters. The underground basin would then be lined with stones to prevent erosion before being filled with soil and appropriate native plants. These plants would be arranged based on their water tolerance in order to promote the most success. Finally, once the plants are in place, the rain garden would be covered with a layer of mulch to keep the soil most. The rain garden would create a space of community enjoyment while also making positive changes to the environment due to the cleaner water going into the watershed.

CLEAN WOMEN, CLEAN WATER

2016, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
Clean Women, Clean Water
Abigail Aubrey, Taylor Schmidt, and Alex Herbert attend Mount Notre Dame High School, whose student body is entirely female. They learned that a major problem for watersheds is that girls are flushing their menstrual products down toilets, impacting plumbing and creating waste that sits in landfills. To combat this problem, the group wanted to educate their peers and encourage them to try reusable pads and menstrual cups.

Women throw away and flush hundreds of disposable products and their packaging every month, driven by an industry that promotes the mindset of “out of sight, out of mind”. Disposable pads or tampons aren’t out of sight or mind, however, they are everywhere. To avoid toxins and the waste from traditional products, there are reusable alternatives. One menstrual cup or reusable pad will prevent waste and the cost of disposable products each month.

To educate the women of their school, Abigail, Taylor, and Alex created a week-long event called “Pad Wars”. During this week each grade is challenged to raise the most feminine hygiene products to send to Uganda so that young girls can continue to go to school. If someone brings in reusable products, they will receive extra points. Then after school, students would be able to attend a workshop about the importance of the watershed and receive a reusable menstrual cup. Through education, the group’s hope is that their peers are called to change their habits. In that way, they will be helping their watershed while taking care of their bodies!

AUTOMATIC RAINWATER TERRACE SYSTEM

2016, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
Automatic Rainwater Terrace System
Creating a solution to the blindness of water usage and supply is imperative to saving the watershed and protecting the environment of the future. Molly Bonino of Mount Notre Dame High School focused on utilizing stored rainwater to make a difference in the Little Miami Watershed. To do this, she planned to put her attention to the issue of Ohioans dumping and overusing water and polluting storm drains.

To address this problem, Molly wanted to create an automatic rainwater terrace garden. This structure would be created with a boxed chamber, made of biodegradable plastic, with a soil moisture sensor. The sensor will send an electrical signal through the relays, allowing the box to open and release water for plants.

Conserving rain water and using it for tasks like watering a garden will not only prevent pollution of storm drains, but also positively maintain the growth of vegetation and soil richness. This sort of garden could be implemented at a home or school, starting small then growing in order to create awareness and contribute to the global push for change.

SAND OVER SALT

2016, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
Sand over salt image
In the winter, Oak Hills High School uses a lot of road salt to de-ice the surrounding pavement surfaces. Bridget Kallmeyer, Erin Kallmeyer, and Lindsey Lawrence found this unnecessary, as more salt than needed was being used, and was running off into the Stormwater collection system that flowed into nearby waterways. To combat some of the excess salt use, the group came up with a plan to replace the salt used in the student parking lot with sand.

The project would first only cover ¼ of the student lot due to concerns from the building manager, but if it goes well, more of the space can begin to use sand. Additionally, the custodial staff will be educated on the use of sand and why using too much salt can be detrimental to the waterways.

Sand would potentially decrease the amount of money that is spent on salt annually, and provides traction and works in all temperatures. However, since sand does not melt snow, it would require more applications in order to keep students safe. If the implementation is successful, Oak Hills would be saving money and protecting their nearby waterways!

Invasive Plant Removal at Mathis Pond

2016 Grass Valley, California, USA

When Nåah Lifland, of Sierra Academy of Expeditionary Learning, was asked how he could improve his watershed, he immediately thought of Mathis Pond Preserve, an area that students from his school visit to get field experience with water quality sampling.

Nåah proposed to expand stewardship activities at the pond by organizing invasive plant removal efforts. These efforts would allow the native plants to flourish and provide more suitable wildlife habitat in the area. With funding from Nutrien, Nåah was able to purchase tools for the task of removing the invasive species, particularly Himalayan blackberries.

During the 2016/17 school year, 65 students visited the site four times and removed blackberries for four hours on each visit, totaling 1,040 hours of service improving the habitat at Mathis Pond. Future students will also use the tools to continue stewardship of the Preserve.

Cleaning Garcia Bend

2016 Sacramento, California, USA

Garcia Bend Park is a neighborhood park on the banks of the Sacramento River. Trash and debris left here by visitors or illegally dumped here continues to be an ongoing issue. Unfortunately, most of that trash ends up directly entering the adjacent waters, and directly or indirectly harming aquatic wildlife. Alexa Smith and Priscilla Dawson wanted to practice good stewardship of their watershed and encourage others to do the same. Alexa, who has been involved in clean-ups before, understood how eye-opening clean-ups can be; seeing all the accumulated debris directly can make students think twice before littering themselves and inspire them to take action. Priscilla and Alexa organized a group from The MET Sacramento to return to this area. In one morning, they collected 11 bags of trash from the park! Students enjoyed being outdoors while doing something good for their community and the watershed.

Southside Park Clean Up

2016 Sacramento, California, USA

For this year’s Caring for Our Watershed project, Molly Crofoot and Miana Muscat of The MET Sacramento focused on a park/pond area adjacent to their school. Their goal was to build on the success of past clean-up efforts, and organize more volunteers to thoroughly cover a greater area than previous efforts. The duo also expressed the possibility of building an annual, if not bi-annual tradition of involving their classmates as stewards of this park, as it is so close to their campus. To that end, Molly and Miana recruited approximately 30 volunteers to help with their clean-up event at Southside Park. Because they had so many volunteers, they split into groups for litter pick-up as well as invasive species removal. Molly and her classmates reported having a fun day in the field, and getting a lot accomplished. This clean-up was completed with perfect timing, as it was just before the Earth Day celebration was to be held at the park.

Bat Boxes at Del Paso Park

2016 Sacramento, California, USA

In his Caring for Our Watersheds proposal, Ryan Kizer explained that building and installing bat boxes in a local park would not only provide habitat for bats to expand their population, but would also help to create natural control of pests, especially mosquitoes. This natural pest control would reduce the need for use of pesticides, which can be costly and may have negative effects on the environment, wildlife, and/or human health. With project funding from Nutrien, Ryan constructed 4 bat boxes. After he painted the boxes and put asphalt shingles on the roof areas, he mounted them on poles in 2 different areas of Del Paso Park. In the next few years, bats will move into the safe environment of the boxes. These bats will also provide natural pest control to the area, as well as a cool show for visitors as they exit the box at dusk to feed!

Crayola Colour Cycle!

2016, Trenton, Ontario, Canada

Marker Recycling Student Action Project Ontario

In 2016, a student named Melissa from Murray Centennial Public School proposed an idea of the “Crayola Colour Cycle” that will help to improve the waste management at her school. Melissa will educate the school on her project before she begins. She will also be holding a colouring contest for primary grades the winner gets a Crayola t-shirt, and handing out stickers to the other classes that say “I recycle” on them.

She did the“Crayola Colour Cycle” project throughout her school where she got all the students and staff to bring in markers, pens and highlighters that they have at school or at home. Once they brought them in they would be collected, then later shipped back to Crayola where they will be recycled properly through a company called JBI. They specialize in recycling dense plastics. This project was implemented in November 2016, with the help of her school.

This project is going to help reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfills as well as the amount of energy needed to make brand new products for the future.

Revitalizing Rice Lake

2016, Alderville, Ontario Canada

In 2016, Gezhii, a grade eight student at Roseneath Centennial Public School proposed the idea to revitalize a creek, placing 2^nd overall. The creek is located in Roseneath Ontario. Sandercock Creek that is in a decline, due to the agricultural fields that have a lot of nutrient runoff, and negatively impact the health of the creek, which then flows directly into Rice Lake.

Revitalizing Rice Lake Student Action Ontario

Gezhii suggested the idea of having volunteers come out for a day to help plant different native trees and herbaceous plants on either side of the shoreline in order to help rejuvenate the creek. These plants along the sides of the creek are key to the health of critters that call this water home. As a result planting this shoreline buffer will help to decrease erosion and aid in filtering water.

Implementation has begun in 2018, a small group of grade six and seven’s from Roseneath Centennial Public School came to participate in a planting day on June 7, 2018. These students planted eighty-five trees and herbaceous plants along the shoreline of the creek.

Gezhii hopes that revitalizing this portion of the Sandercock creek will do a small part in improving aquatic life and increase water quality.