Centreville Rain Gardens

2013 Centreville, Virginia, USA

In the spring of 2013, a team of 15 sixth‐grade students at Centreville Elementary School took a close look at the playground area at the back of the school. Observing during a rainstorm, they noted soil, trash, and mulch washing into the storm drains that lead to Little Rocky Run. Working through the Caring for Our Watersheds Student Workbook, and relying on information from the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District, they came up with a plan to build three strategically placed rain gardens and to keep the school community informed about why rain gardens matter.

Third place finishers in the 2013 Caring for Our Watersheds competition, the Centreville students built their rain gardens, edging them with handmade “bio‐logs” seeded with two grass and two wildflower species. They communicated their project on the school news, a presentation, and signage at the rain garden areas.

To cover costs of the project, they were able to leverage a $1,200 Fairfax County Public Schools Schoolyard Stewardship Mini‐Grant and received $630 in implementation funding from Nutrien

Automatic Taps

2013 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Tory Okemow and Dwight Kennedy noticed that their school used a lot of water as a result of taps left carelessly on in the bathrooms. They proposed that automatic taps would use less water and would be cleaner, safer, and more environmentally friendly than regular taps.

These students also live on school residence, and noted even more wasted water: “the Student Lodge does waste a lot of water all year round with students leaving the water on when brushing teeth.” The benefits of automatic taps include being “easy to operate; stopping the spread of germs and bacteria; preventing water overflow; preventing scalding; and saving water and money.”

An automatic tap was installed in one of the bathrooms at Southeast Collegiate, thanks to Nutrien. The students hope to monitor the difference between the automatic tap and regular taps at the school to demonstrate the need to change all of the taps in the school and at the residence.

Toilet Buddy Town

2013 Manitou, Manitoba, Canada

Lenina Howatt from Nellie McClung Collegiate wanted to propose a simple solution to help conserve water.

“Every litre of this resource is incredibly precious to our environment, especially due to its scarcity. As soon as humans intervene, extracting water from its natural watershed, nature’s course is interrupted. The water is chemically processed and treated, “contaminated” with human use, and further treated again. This drawn out and lengthy process is energy inefficient and costly! But, we can reduce our impact on our watersheds and their natural cycles, further preserving them and all their benefits (filter/buffer water, provide drought/flood stability and “bounce back” capability, maintain biodiversity, promote primary productivity, support wildlife, and erosion and sedimentation control) by simply doing one thing… CONSERVING water!”

She suggested something inexpensive, easy-to-install called “Toilet Buddies”. “Toilet Buddies are plastic, water-filled bags that hang inside your toilet tank, displacing water and saving you the liter capacity of the bag each time you flush!”

Her goal was to distribute toilet buddies to each household in her community and thanks to an $800 contribution by Nutrien, this proposal became a reality.

“My goal for this is to make my town more water-wise and to locally pave a water conscious path for the future!”

Build and Install Owl Boxes on Local Farms

2013 Colusa, California, USA

After looking into environmental issues in their rural community, Ruby Dunham and Kyle Cervantes were concerned about the use of rodenticide to control rodent populations on farms. Because rodenticide takes a while to process through the system, rodents are slowly affected and are easy targets for predators, usually raptors. Thus rodenticide can cause secondary poisoning of raptor populations, a current threat to their survival.

Dunham and Cervantes wrote a proposal to build and install barn owl boxes on a local farm to both provide habitat and natural control of rodents. This would reduce or eliminate the need for rodenticide, decreasing the introduction of these chemicals into out watersheds and the birds and wildlife that inhabit them– a win-win situation for farmers and the environment.

Students worked with the school’s shop teacher and a local cabinet maker to build the boxes. Funding was provided by the local Morning Star Cannery, who helped to install the boxes at a grower’s ranch. Students built a total of 22 owl boxes for use at local farms and ranches. Barn owls, very efficient hunters (a family can consume over 3000 mice a year), have already begun to inhabit the boxes. This type of integrated pest management can serve as a model for other farms in the area.

Locating Cesspools to Improve the Quality of Water

2013, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This project proposes a solution to a common problem in the urban areas surrounding the watershed. The problem in these areas is that a high percentage of new homes are built without access to sewage systems or central running water. Instead, every new house makes its own cesspool and well to get water.

Lack of knowledge about the location of individual cesspool has lead to many water intakes being located too close to the cesspools. A minimum distance between the cesspools of the neighbouring houses is recommended, meaning this is currently a health hazard to many in this area.

The project proposes a simple solution: make a public database of the location of the cesspools with the help of the community and the town hall. The project will use GPS to make the data public, and easily accessible. It will be launched using a geospatial database built by one of the winning projects of CFW 2012. (See Database of the Good Things, 2012).

Students Create Water Efficient Irrigation System for School Garden

2012 Sacramento, California, USA

Students in the Green ROP Program at William Daylor High School were concerned about the amount of water that is wasted by home or commercial building owners that use older or traditional methods of watering their yards, gardens, or landscaping. tools such as sprinklers and hoses themselves, or when used during an inappropriate time of day, can often lead to an inefficient use of water. As water conservation is critical in California, they wanted to complete a project in their school garden to demonstrate a water efficient drip irrigation system.

The team submitted a proposal to install drip irrigation to the school garden, but also wanted to incorporate a water catchment barrel, pump, soil sensor, and solar=powered controller for the system.

The students worked with an irrigation specialist from the city who met with the students at school to show them how to install drip line to the boxes, and to show how a solar controller could help them regulate the watering of the garden. This specialist was able to get distributors to donate many materials and equipment, such as the drip line and solar controller. The students utilized the Caring for Our Watersheds implementation funding for the pump and sensor.

The Green ROP class now has an efficient, educational tool for the students to learn from because they can program watering times and lengths according to the change in season, temperature, and needs of the plants. The school no longer mishaps of over-watering by people leaving the sprinklers or hoses running. The rain barrel and pump is hooked up to the irrigation system to be used first before they need to use the city water source. The project truly demonstrates water efficiency and was a real success!

Rain Barrel Workshop

2012 Arlington, Virginia, USA

When sixth graders from Kenmore Middle School visited Four Mile Run at Bluemont Park in Arlington, they were surprised to find that the water was low in dissolved oxygen. To help address some of the causes, such as elevated temperatures in runoff and stormwater-borne pollutants, nutrients and organic materials, they decided to promote the use of rain barrels as a citizen-based approach to stormwater management.

To accomplish this goal, students held a rain barrel workshop for the community, educating residents about the use of rain barrels to help improve water quality. Their presentation discussed how stormwater affects dissolved oxygen in Four Mile Run, then covered techniques for decorating the rain barrels. Workshop participants could purchase rain barrels at reduced cost, decorating them them for use at home. 25 individuals from nine households attended, and twelve rain barrels went home with the workshop participants.

Stream Cleanup and Art Project

2012 Arlington, Virginia, USA

After visiting Four Mile Run, Swanson Middle School sixth graders decided they wanted to address the problem of trash evident in and around the stream. Beyond just picking it up for proper disposal, the students wanted to reach the community and educate others on how trash, particularly plastic, negatively impacts aquatic life.

After conducting a litter clean-up at Bluemont Park and nearby streets, the students used the material they collected to make “trashworks” artwork to raise awareness, arranging with the school to display these works at the main office entrance. Their project was a finalist in the Caring for Our Watershed contest, and required no funding to implement.

One Plus Project

2012 Arlington, Virginia, USA

After learning about some of the problems that affect the Chesapeake Bay, sixth graders at Swanson Middle School realized the with 17 million residents in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, “if all those people did one little action to help clean the Bay, that would be 17 million little actions.” In forming their project, they decided to focus their action on convincing others to take that one little action.

The project involved creating a large mural-style drawing depicting a flowing stream. The mural was overlaid with removable transparent bookmarks, each of which described a simple action one could take to improve watershed health. The bookmarks themselves depicted images of something negative (such as litter), and the viewer’s removal of a bookmark would represent the viewer’s commitment to the positive action described. Their completed project they posted at school.

Water Can Save Winkler

2012 Alexandria, Virginia, USA

Seventh graders at George Washington Middle School tested water in tributaries of Holmes Run at the Winkler Botanical Preserve in Alexandria, and were concerned bout the extensive land development and an increase in impervious surfaces in the headwater areas of the small watersheds that supply them. From repeated testing of the water quality in the park, they could see that the streams are currently impacted by nutrient loads, particularly from nitrate deposition from automotive sources on nearby Interstate 395, and they wanted to ensure that planners were considering the impact of further development.

Working with the staff at the Preserve, the students initiated a water monitoring program to back their findings with data. They presented their findings before the Alexandria City Council at a public hearing on the neighborhood development plan and presented 416 signatures supporting a long term monitoring program and no increase in stormwater inflows to the Preserve. They also worked to draw public atention to the isue, writing a newspaper article for the Alexandria Gazeette-Packet, asking for community support and funding through Action Alexandria, and submitting questions for the Democratic City Council candidates’ forum in an election year.