Downstream Impacts: A Lesson for 4th Graders at Sauk River WD Frozen Fest

River Watch was invited to present at the Sauk River Watershed District’s annual Frozen Fest, an educational event where 4th graders travel to stations led by various experts and explore a wide variety of hydrology topics. 

Using an activity perfected at the 2024 Green Camp, we explored concepts of a watershed, and what it means to be upstream and downstream. The students were each given a lump of clay and told to construct something they would find in a watershed. Obviously this is a wide prompt since a watershed is just an area of land. We got sculptures across the gamut, including many turtles, bridges, and the occasional volcano. The students placed their creations on one of two baking sheet with holes drilled near the short side. This allowed water to drain from one tray (watershed) to the other. Adding in some food coloring to represent pollution, and a basin to collect water from the second tray, we were able to model the movement of water from the Sauk River Watershed, to the Mississippi River Watershed, to the Gulf of Mexico. 

What I love about this demonstration is that the hands-on nature of it keeps kids engaged, while it explores 3 simple, but incredibly fundamental topics. My hope is that this activity sparks an awareness of what it means to live upstream and how pollution moves across the landscape - collecting in large quantities downstream from where it started.

This is a fundamental concept that is regularly ignored when looking at water infrastructure projects. It is difficult to measure the impact of a single project when the water downstream is a mix of so many upstream sources. The default assumption then becomes that the downstream impact from any single project is NOTHING. Our inability to accurately measure downstream impacts is not an excuse to ignore them entirely, as is the current standard practice. 

By initiating this idea to young learners, my hope is that when they are involved in decision making, they keep this fundamental idea in mind and use it to guide their decision making.

Chloride Sampling: Winter Salt Week

River Watch is back for some winter water sampling - specifically looking for chloride that has moved from our roads to our water. 

The short story on chloride is that any non-natural sources of chloride pollution (road salt, water softeners) have an incredibly long lasting impact on the water it ends up in. There is not currently widespread cost effective technology to remove salt from our freshwater. Even state of the art facilities like the one in Minneapolis cannot remove chloride from the water. The result is that all of the salt that makes its way into our water stays there. Being that the organisms that rely on freshwater (including ourselves) need it to be without salt, this poses a huge problem for natural waters and drinking water sources.

In conjunction with the recently established Winter Salt Week, and in partnership with the Izaak Walton League’s Salt Watch, River Watch trained students from 5 schools in the Metro Area (Bloomington Jefferson & Kennedy, Wayzata, School of Environmental Studies, & Chaska) how to get involved in the volunteer science initiative to track chloride pollution across the US.

Only one of these three groups (Jefferson) was able to test liquid water (since the stormwater ponds we planned to test were frozen quite deep), but the results from the liquid water tested indicated dangerous levels of salt (670 + mg/L). The groups that tested melted ice found no significant chloride pollution, but that is not entirely surprising since the ice wouldn’t be affected by liquid runoff. 

The students at Jefferson started planning an advocacy campaign to talk to their Groundskeepers to reduce salt application to recommended levels that meet safety standards and reduce the overall pollution of the salt. This is exactly the type of data-driven advocacy we hope to see from teams participating in the Salt Watch & River Watch. With a little education to those who make decisions impacting our water, we can drive incremental changes in behavior  that will benefit the Minnsotan outdoor space, water, and people.

Thank you to those who participated in chloride sampling. River Watch is looking to work with more schools this winter, so if you are interested in getting your school involved please contact me, Tom Crawford at tom@friendsmnvalley.org.

Bloomington Jefferson HS Earth Corps

Chaska HS Green Club

Wayzata HS Eco Club

Water Experts Speaker Series: Bailey Hadnott, Wastewater Engineer

Bloomington Jefferson welcomed Bailey Hadnott, Wastewater Engineer from Barr Engineering to speak to their classes in mid-December. Since (we assumed) winter was upon us, the topic of discussion was the impacts of salt (chloride) pollution on our water, infrastructure, and livelihood.

Salt is a natural part of the environment, but humans have dramatically increased the amount of salt in our environment through practices like salting roads and sidewalks to prevent ice from forming. Salting during the winter is an effective way to keep people safe, however, many people overestimate how much salt is actually needed to work effectively. The result is that unnecessary amounts of salt are spread across our city, and most of that salt makes its way into our freshwater resources. 

All of this excess salt causes a number of problems for humans and animals alike. Due to salt’s solubility in water, it requires an incredible amount of energy to remove it from water.  Most drinking water filtration plants and wastewater treatment plants do not have the equipment necessary to remove salt, so once salt is in the water it is unlikely to be filtered out. Consequently, our natural waters are becoming saltier, which causes great harm to freshwater organisms, and our drinking water is becoming saltier, which can lead to long term health effects like hypertension and kidney damage. On top of that, salt water is corrosive, and degrades infrastructure like plumbing, bridges, and roads. As pipes corrode they can release lead and other toxic metals into the water, like Flint, MI experienced in 2018.

Reducing and avoiding the ill effects of salt water requires us to reduce the amount of salt we spread across our cities and towns. The good news is that lower amounts of salt are still effective at eliminating ice from forming. Please check out the graphic below for proper salting practices.

Let me end this with a big thank you to Bailey for sharing her expertise and preparing students with the knowledge necessary to make decisions that reduce their impact on water quality.