Ink Tea Stone Leaf

I had the fine experience last week of joining some of the 11th grade students I tutor on a little field trip around the school’s campus. I could have done with weather a little warmer, but it was still a great day to stretch the legs and take in some spring air with our education. The activity was courtesy of our city’s water department, who gave us a fascinating look at the intersection of municipal infrastructure and the natural environment from a perspective we all probably consider too rarely. I have to be grateful for every chance I have to experience it, and I hope the kids are, too.

The students and staff at the school where I work spend most of the day indoors (just like they’re supposed to), so it can be easy to forget the significance of the features surrounding the building, or to fail to see the care with which those features are designed. Our region being notoriously rainy, great care has to be taken in managing the flow of water when it falls on our paved surfaces, and wherever it’s possible the city’s techniques and devices are cleverly blended into the background. The various depressions in our planters and other green spaces are designed to pool water where it can seep into the ground, while the soil and plants act as a natural filtration system. The technician who guided us around the building told us that the preference is to rely on structures like that, although our parking lot also has a few artificial filters for areas hidden amongst the storm water tunnels.

Of course, in the absence of a city with paved roads and buildings water will go wherever gravity leads it, down into the earth and along low-lying channels. In fact, our school lies alongside a creek that collects most of the water that falls on that part of the city. Urban runoff will of course carry along the chemical pollutants that humans can’t keep contained, which is why the second part of the activity saw our students march down to the water’s edge and perform tests of various measures of the water’s quality. Among the things they examined were acidity, oxygenation, and the concentration of phosphates, all factors which can markedly affect the health of riparian ecosystems large and small.

Indeed, as we gathered to test the water, I felt an anxious concern for the various creatures I could see feeding and drinking in the creek. The story of our nation’s environment is grim these days, as the Environmental Protection Agency has devoted the bulk of its resources to inventing legal means to abandon its mission, and vast areas of formerly protected land and water have been opened to exploitation by actors of little principle. Around our school’s creek I could see and hear mallard ducks, crows, blue jays, and red winged blackbirds, creatures that depend not only on clean drinking water but healthy populations of the harder-to-see invertebrates and fish upon which they feed. I was not eager to hear that they were being starved or poisoned in their own homes.

On this occasion I also learned, to my astonished delight, that we were standing only a few yards from a genuine beaver dam, cleverly hidden by the trees (as the beavers no doubt prefer). I have walked past that dam hundreds of times without any idea that it was there; since the only aquatic rodents I’ve seen in the wild since I moved to this state are the invasive and relatively unexciting nutria, it has never even occurred to me that I should be on the lookout for beaver habitations. The discovery added a whole new dimension to my appreciation for this little ecosystem, a living example of the principles of so many biology lessons, only a stone’s throw from where I sit in a windowless room under fluorescent lights every day.

I had another cause for delight that day: the student’s measurements, as confirmed by electronic instruments, revealed that the water flowing through the creek was remarkably clean. It was a bit muddy and a touch on the acidic side of the pH scale, but there was little cause for concern for the plant and animal life that depended on that spot. The technicians were pleased as well, and they should be, because their efforts in testing our local waterways, maintaining infrastructure, and enforcing clean water regulations have a lot to do with it. If the ducks could read those results, I’m sure they would be the most pleased of all.

Perfectly pristine conditions are not often to be found in urban landscapes, and even decent quality is something you just cannot take for granted. As we toured the planters that filter the storm water, our guide observed that the plants in one of them were nearly all dead. Evidently a landscaping crew had recently sprayed herbicides there in spite of regulations, which not only reduces the effectiveness of the natural filter but allows those same chemicals to enter our municipal water supply. As a daily drinker of our city’s tap water, I’m certainly glad to know that people are on the lookout for foolish actions like that.

I can’t think of anything I’d rather have young people see up close than an effective, scientifically based, and aesthetically marvelous program of environmental management, performed by representatives of their local government, and conducted right in the heart of their community. It did my own soul good to see it alongside them. Days like these are powerful reminders of the value of education, and a reminder to savor the benefits of cool, clean water where we can.