By Megan Kelley
Review Writer
Scripps Middle School eighth graders headed out to Paint Creek on Monday for their 17th annual stream monitoring field trip to test the stream’s water quality/health.
Students spent most of their day at Paint Creek by Meeks Park in Downtown Lake Orion testing several water components. In large groups, they rotated through stations where they would test the chemical and physical aspects of the stream, catch bugs to learn which are present and which are not, survey the land use in the surrounding area and calculate the stream’s flow.
Several students even put on waders and entered the stream with their mentors to obtain the necessary information for their groups.
Carol Binggeser an eighth grade science teacher at Scripps has been bringing her students out to the stream to track it’s health for some time now all thanks to a grant from General Motors and the Clinton River Watershed Council that they had received several years ago. Part of this grant requires the recipients to educate the population of their findings.
Students rotate through the various stations and collect their data, which is submitted online to the Clinton River Watershed Council and is then used in their annual report, Binggeser explained.
“By testing the different chemical amounts and the temperature, that tells us part of the information. The physical attributes of the river – the depth, the flow, erosion, trees and bushes along the side help us know if the river is healthy. Of course the bugs — benthic macroinvertebrates — tell us the health of the river as well since some bugs can tolerate pollution and some can’t. So by identifying the critters that live in the water — that gives us a hint about whether the water is polluted. So it’s all of this together that helps us know the overall health of Paint Creek,” Binggeser said.
Two of Binggeser’s students, Caty and David, said that in class they recently learned about watersheds and tributaries.
“We have the Paint Creek tributary and it’s going into the Clinton River. So this is all hands on learning, how healthy our river really is and it’s based in Lake Orion so it’s real life science,” said Caty. “(So far) we’ve learned that our river doesn’t have enough dissolved oxygen but it’s mostly pretty healthy.”
After the trip, students returned to school where they submitted their findings to Binggeser who had good news to share.
“Our results this year are similar to recent years. The chemical tests show an overall good rating with three categories coming in at the excellent level (pH, temperature change and turbidity). Two tests showed a good rating (phosphates and nitrates) which are on par with recent years,” Binggeser said. “ The stream flow and bank erosion are similar to past years as well. Although there was some trash found in the river, it was not excessive given the rain run-off recently. The benthic macroinvertebrates that were present showed an overall fair rating with several organisms present from the pollution tolerant group. In recent years, we have had several poor ratings so the stream is showing some improvement in this category.”