Cooking up Trouble

Purpose : This game demonstrates the concepts of non-point source pollution and the importance of vegetated buffer strips. Playing this game before Bufferella works well.

Students :
All age groups

Equipment :
Mixing cup
sponges
water
miniature trees
bulb syringe
salt
gum wrapper
rubbermaid tote with top
charcoal
squirt bottles
vegetable oil
labels
soil
cocoa
green coolaid to simulate fertilizer
red coolaid to simulate acid rain

SOLs that correlate to this activity include: Sci 4.4, 4.5, 4.8

Procedure :

Put on chef's hat and apron and say "How about a cooking demonstration?"
"My best recipe is "Cooking Up Trouble," and I have all my ingredients right here:
First, I start with the mixing cup of Augusta County water. You know, we have wonderful water in Augusta County…I bet you've seen some of the springs and streams we have when you go on a hike. Nice and clean. You can even jump right over some of the tiny streams, because we're right at the beginning of two big watersheds: the James and the Shenandoah-Potomac. The headwaters of these watersheds start right here in Augusta County, just as clean as they can be.

But, before the streams leave Augusta County, at least 13 of them have gotten so many pollutants in them that we are having to do a lot of work to clean them. Now I have two questions:
Number 1 – What pollutants could possible get into our clean water?
And Number 2 – Who could possibly put them there? Do you think it's somebody from over in West Virginia who comes over at night and puts pollution in our streams? (Laughter) Or maybe some factories in Chicago or Mississippi?

Well, as much as we might like to think that, it's probably not someone else. It's gotta be us! But it's not any one of us in particular. We can't point a finger at someone and say, "Stop that!" It's sort of all of us, and we call this kind of pollution "Non-point source", because you can't point a finger at it.
Now what kinds of pollutants do you think could get in our water? (Wait, or rummage around in your ingredients…it's OK if kids get a hint from looking at your labels). Usually the first suggestion is "Litter". You're right, of course. Litter can be just about anything, either dropped by accident in the water, or left lying on the ground in the watershed. Whenever it rains, anything on the land tends to wash down into the streams and rivers, including litter. Here's an old gum wrapper. Let's put that in to represent all kinds of litter, from aluminum cans to old mattresses and cars. (Give the kids a minute to tell about the litter they have seen, and maybe add, "Yeah, people used to think that rivers were a good place to get rid of trash, but we know better now!).

Wait a few seconds for someone to suggest another pollutant, and, if no one can think of anything, pick up an ingredient. Be careful not to accuse or indict anyone in particular, but be positive and upbeat about all the better possibilities we know about.

Oil products – Use bulb syringe to squirt some of the water from the charcoal container…there is a little vegetable oil in the top.
"I bet you've been to the mall when it's raining, and seen those beautiful rainbows on top of the puddles…where do you suppose that oil goes if it keeps on raining? You're right, into the stream. This could be oil, or gasoline, or brake fluid, lots of oil products.

Soil – (Sprinkle some soil in and whisk it up) How could soil be a pollutant? It's a natural substance! But whenever we take off the grass and trees from a field or construction site or road, a lot of soil washes away – enough soil to make the streams look like soup. How would you like to be a fish in one of those streams – trying to pump this water through your gills? Yuck. That's why we have good laws to get people to plant grass right away when they are building something.

There are two other problems with soil pollution in water. One is that we need to keep our soil right where it is, not down in the Chesapeake Bay. It takes 100 years to make an inch of topsoil, but only one good rainstorm to wash it away. The other problem is that soil in the water blocks the sunlight from growing the Submerged Aquatic Vegetation – the good plants that grow in and around the streams and rivers, which help to put oxygen in the water.

Manure and Poultry Litter – (Sniff and sprinkle) I bet you've seen some of the nicest cows walk down to the stream for a drink, and stay there to poop! Cows are pretty hard to potty train! And then they have to drink poop water too! We love our cows, but we don't want them to poop in our water. We also want to let the bushes and trees grow around the streams to keep them clean, and cows do a pretty good job of stomping or eating them too. So we've gotten smarter about fencing our cows out of the streams, and piping the clean water into a trough for them. We know that manure and poultry litter are good fertilizers for growing crops too, but we have to be really careful about how much we put on, and when, so that it doesn't get rained into the streams.

How about people poop? Out here in the country, we have septic systems, where bacteria can take care of whatever we flush. Then the clean water can percolate through the sand and gravel. But only if our septic tanks are working right, and get cleaned out every couple of years. In our towns we have sewage treatment plants, where they have lots of good bacteria and oxygen stirrers. We have to take extra good care of them to be sure that the water coming out of them is clean before it gets into the river too. We know that we have a few septic problems here in the county, so let's put in a squirt of leaky septic fields too (same container as oil products).

Fertilizer – (Sprinkle in and whisk) There must be some kind of contest to see who can put the most fertilizer on their lawns. Have you seen those giant piles of fertilizer at the store in the spring? It's a trick, I think, to keep you all mowing all summer! We all know that grass just can't use all the fertilizer we put on. So what happens to all that extra fertilizer? Yup, it become part of our non-point source pollution recipe.

Salt - "Wait what's this? Salt? How could salt get in our rivers? How about in the winter when the roads are icy, and we need to put salt on them to stay safe? We have to be really careful not to spread salt right by the creeks, though.

Anything else? What about this acid rain bottle? Where does acid rain come from? It's another one of those non-point problems too. When we all drive our cars, the exhaust goes up into the atmosphere and contributes to acid rain. And, when we turn on all of our electric appliances, we are asking the power plant for more electricity. Guess how most of our electricity is made…burning coal. It's just like saying "Hey, could you put another shovel of coal in the power plant for me?!" We can get the electricity we want, but we also get the coal smoke we don't want…because it causes air pollution and acid rain. It makes me be sure to turn off the lights and TV when I leave a room!

Pesticides and Herbicides - "Oh yeah, we have some pesticides and herbicides in here. Remember that lawn fertilizer? Often, people put in some weed killers (herbicides) at the same time as the fertilizer, and call it "Weed and Feed". I don't know why everyone hates dandelions so much! But if it comes to a choice of clean water with dandelions or polluted water without dandelions, I bet we'd learn to get along with them! There are lots of ways to trick some of our bug pests besides spraying all of them, and we're getting smart about that too.

Now, we have really cooked up a mess, haven't we? We really can find and measure these pollution ingredients in Augusta County water too, and we need to find ways to clean them up. Wouldn't it be great if we could keep these pollutants from running off into the streams in the first place? If you wanted to invent a way to catch them before they got to the stream, how would you do it?

Give kids a chance to give their ideas, and praise the merit in all of them.
"You know, Nature already has a really good system that can take care of most of these pollutants, if we let it – it's trees and shrubs, growing all along our streams, like a filter or a buffer! Just to prove a point, I brought along one with me (not as good as a natural one, but we can get the idea).

(Take out the box lid with the sponge and tell the kids that the sponge represents the roots of the trees and other vegetation, and the box lid is the watershed. The school or their houses would be on the box top above the buffer.

Now let's give this buffer a chance to clean up some of our recipe. (Pour about ? cup down the box lid, and let it pool in the sponge). Suspense is good. "In fact it illustrates the principle we are after with a buffer! Whistle the Jeopardy theme song while you wait. When the water finally does begin to trickle through, begin to ask the kids what might have happened in a real buffer to those ingredients. The soil and fertilizers, manures are easy. The oil products and pesticides may be sequestered in the trees or broken down by soil bacteria. The litter can be picked up by kids on Earth Day, or will gradually decompose. And the clean water is gradually released into the healthy, cool stream, even in a drought.

Take off your chef's hat and apron, and thank the kids for making it so much fun to talk about science and good conservation. Dispose of your "recipe" into a waste container for later cleanup, as kids worry about pouring it down the drain. I usually dump it on trees at the edge of the parking lot before I leave.

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Last modified 11/22/06 11:53 AM by menichol (history) Site contents