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Perkins Park turns into water-education classroom for Warren students
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Along the banks of the Mahoning River, fourth-graders in Warren City Schools became more keenly aware of a resource most of us take for granted — water.
Using a model of a typical hillside of fields and homes, Kelly Hardval, education coordinator for the Trumbull Soil and Water Conservation District, asked students to take turns with a small handful of mini chocolate chips. She asked them to sprinkle a few on the green space to represent the “poop” from farm animals and pets.
She sprinkled fine sand on the hillside to represent pollutants such as bug killers, weed killers, trash and motor oil. Then she sprinkled water on the model to show how those pollutants work their way into the streams and other waterways.
The demonstration and others were part of the 13th annual Waters Festival in Perkins Park that continues today. About 150 Warren students are participating each day.
“How many of you have a dog or a cat?” Hardval asked the students, who were seated under one of the park’s pavilions. “We have our own little herd of animals,” she said. “We need to think about their waste, too. It gets in the rain and gets in the lakes and streams and goes into Mosquito Creek. We don’t want it in our water,” she said.
“It may not be fun, but pick it up. Clean up after your dog.”
Earlier, the students learned that Mosquito Lake is the source of the drinking water for Warren. “The cleaner it is to start with, the easier it will be to clean up,” Hardval said of the treatment process the city puts the water through.
“Ever see litter in the roadside ditch?” she asked the children. “We need to think about putting our trash in the proper recycling bins. We can recycle pretty much everything. Styrofoam is about the only thing you have to put in the trash can.”
Hardval said the children could help their parents by suggesting that they not apply fertilizer to their lawns if it’s likely to rain soon because it will cause unnecessary chemical runoff into the streams. She said people also should be careful not to put grass clippings into the street, where they can clog a storm drain.
The decomposition of leaves and grass uses oxygen, which reduces the amount of oxygen available for fish and other animals, she said. One environmentally friendly option is to mulch grass so that it goes back into the soil.
Liquids from automobiles are full of water contaminants, such as motor oil, antifreeze, brake fluid and transmission fluid, Hardval noted, so people should get their car fixed when they notice it is leaving fluids on the pavement.
“If you’re a fish, you don’t want it clogging up your gills,” she said.
After the presentation, Olivia Dunn, a fourth-grader at the Willard K-8 building, said she learned that it’s important to “clean my dog’s poo out of the yard and not throw stuff in the ditch.”
“I learned that even though people litter, you still have to clean it up, no matter what,” said Jonathan Kerr, her classmate at Willard.