Who Polluted the South Platte?

Each spring our SCORES participants learn about what a community is and come up with service projects to do throughout the 10 weeks.

On Tuesday the boy's and girl's teams at Valdez Elementary were fortunate enough to enjoy an interactive presentation from Environmental Learnings For Kids, on "Who polluted the S. Platte River."

The children first learned a little bit about the Platte River. The Platte River begins in the mountains in Vail, CO. It runs east to Denver, through the Plains and empties into the Missouri River, which eventually runs into the Mississippi River which then empties into the Gulf of Mexico. This chain of rivers is important for the students to know how pollution at the beginning of the Platte River can impact the water quality all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

The students went through a 19 character reading that descibes how different situations by different groups of people have caused pollution in the Platte River. Through the reading they learned some valuable lessons on how to be environmental friendly. Some of the characters were hikers and rafters who left behind trash/food after eating, while others were the four wheeler driver and the neighbor whose leaks in their vechicles lead to motor oil and antifreeze mixing into the river.

Another was the angular (fisherman) whose line broke while fishing. During this character reading the students learned that emptying extra live bait into the water after fishing is actually harmful to the enviroment since the worms are unnatural and can illness to fish that eat them. There was also a reading on a truck owner who washed his car at home. The water, soap, dirt from the truck runs into the storm drain which then can then leak into other water sources. The environmental lesson from this character was that it is safer for the environment to wash your vechicle at a car wash because most car washes' drains go to a treatment center to be cleaned or they clean the water themselves and reuse it.



The picture on the left shows what the water looked like before the characters started polluting and the the photo on the right shows what the water looks like after the 19th (last) character went. The leader then explained to the students that is what the water looks like after 19 people and that there are 3 million people in Denver. The students were also told that by the time the water reaches the Gulf of Mexico it has been cleaned 50 to 60 times! It really makes you think about what you can do to become more environmentally friendly. It definitely made the students think!

For more information on Environmental Learning for Kids, please click here.