Bruceton students monitor stream quality


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	April 13, 2005 The Dominion Post Bruceton students monitor stream quality By Kathy Plum The Dominion Post BRUCETON MILLS — Bruceton Elementary students got a hands-on science lesson Tuesday, including handling some stream life. No squeamishness here. “This is basically a day that I will never forget,” announced Lisa Stanley, just one day from her 12th birthday, stomping her rubber-boot-clad feet in the stream to force mud, sticks and critters into the net held by other students. It was her favorite part of the day, she said, picking through the debris.
						Students from Bruceton Elementary visited Camp Roy Weller for a day of hands-on learning in science. Students visited a small stream below the lodge, looked for living creatures and also took water samples. Lisa Stanley (above, from left), pushes the stream bottom into a screen catcher, as Brian Chalfant and Devin Cale hold the screen. Ron Rittenhouse/The Dominion Post

	“We found some aqua worms and a couple of other worms. I can’t remember the names,” she said. “One bug was really cool; its legs were like spirals.” Bruceton teachers Shelly Mitchell and Mark Graham arranged the day at Camp Roy Weller after Danielle Adams, an AmeriCorps OSM/VISTA worker with Friends of the Cheat, contacted area schools about presenting a program on stream monitoring. Forty-six sixthgraders spent the day checking streams for pH value, conductivity, oxygen and life.
						Aaron Wolfe holds a crayfish caught in the stream at Camp Roy Weller. Forty-six sixth-graders from Bruceton Elementary spent the day checking streams for pH value, conductivity, oxygen and life.

	Brian Chalfant, an Ameri-Corps OSM/VISTA worker with the Greater Redstone Clearwater Initiative; Friends of the Cheat Mapping Coordinator Ben Mack; WVU intern Brandi Tennant; and WVU students Shannon Gaskins, Laura Otto and Jamie Damstrom also helped out. “They definitely get into it,” said Otto, who is studying to be a teacher, after students tested the water and saw the difference between tap water, stream water and water polluted with acid mine drainage. Adams said, “it’s important for them to be able to see practical applications in what they’re learning in the classroom. Another reason it’s important is a lot of people don’t know what’s happening in their own back yard.” “I’ve learned that there’s different kinds of water, and things can be different temperatures and pH levels and, if there’s too much metal in water, that’s bad,” student Tiffany Johnson, 11, said. She barely stopped for breath before going on about “crayfish, bugs — I forget what they’re called — and when they grow up they live on land and when they’re babies they live in water, but we found some big ones in the water, so that was strange.” “I love science,” she concluded, shaking her head vigorously. Mitchell said students will follow up with a computer program called Green Mountain Testing, which simulates water testing.

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