Prince Charles students take action for clean water.
We pull the plug, and there it goes.
But where did the water come from?
This spring, students from Prince Charles Secondary discovered—through in-class sessions and hands-on action projects that saw them preventing the spread of yellow flag iris in the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area and installing a mycoremediation water filter at a local farm—that the answers to those questions are much more complex than the conveniences of modern life have led us to believe.
Their journey through the water cycle story was led by Know Your Watershed, an education program from the Columbia Basin Trust.
“The students learned how to reduce point source water pollution coming off agricultural lands by using a growing fungus to absorb manure nutrients from the water,” said Wildsight educator Melissa Flint, “a valuable lesson in our agricultural valley where much of our runoff flows into wetlands along the Kootenay River.” Kathleen Takeada’s and Michael Fischer’s grade 9 classes headed out to the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area to help stop the spread of the invasive yellow flag iris.
Laurie Frankom, from the Central Kootenay Invasive Species Society, gave a talk about invasive species and the Wildlife Management Area provided chest waders, gloves, clippers, burlap bags, wheelbarrows and a trailer to load up with yellow flag iris for disposal at the landfill.
And with the program being updated alongside the revised BC curriculum and moving from Grade 8 to Grade 9 classrooms this year, the 7th season of Know Your Watershed—much like the time between winter and summer—was one of transition.
Some students learned about the 1964 Columbia River Treaty, the international agreement between Canada and the United States to coordinate flood control and optimize hydropower generation on both sides of the border.
Some students participated in hands-on learning about water quality monitoring and macroinvertebrates, those tiny creatures that live in our waterways as indicators of stream health.