Georgia College & State University’s Academic Outreach and Aquatic Science Center partnered to host Water Education Week.
October 13-19 was Water Education Week on GCSU’s campus. The week included multiple events leading up to Water Education Day, which debuted alongside Milledgeville’s most popular event, Deep Roots.
“Activities included river cleanups, stream monitoring, and a symposium where Georgia College students presented their research leading up to our annual Water Education Day,” said Ruth Eilers, executive director of Academic Outreach.
The week began with a Tanyard Creek clean-up and stream monitoring Oct. 16. On Oct. 18, water monitorings were hosted at Champion and Tobler Creek. Georgia Adopt-A-Stream Chemical workshops were also hosted Thursday at the GCSU campus and Friday at Tobler Creek.
“We had a good turnout for each monitoring,” said Eilers. “We studied dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature and conductivity of the streams. We study these attributes because it matches the standard protocol for Georgia Adopt-A-Stream.”
Georgia Adopt-AStream is the state's volunteer water quality monitoring program. Academic Outreach has adopted Tanyard, Champion, and Tobler Creeks to monitor. All reports of its findings are added to the Georgia Adopt-A-Stream database.
“Some of the trends we have seen is that dissolved oxygen is fluctuating at each of the streams in a healthy manner and that the water is clear and has no odors, which supports healthy water,” said Eilers. “However, we did notice a trend of high dissolved oxygen at Tanyard Creek and we are currently studying the cause.”
In between the week’s stream monitorings, Academic Outreach and the Aquatic Science Center hosted a symposium open to students and the public to view poster presentations and hear short speeches on students’ current research in the field of water quality. There were presentations and posters from about 15 students covering a range of topics.
“We had a great student turnout for the symposium. Some students gave an elevator speech of their research while others had poster presentations as well as a few hands-on tables of activities,” said Eilers. “The goal behind Water Education Week and each of these events leading up to Water Education Day is to teach about water quality and what we can do to preserve our water.”
Concluding the week, students held their own presentations for Water Education Day to allow the community to directly interact in activities promoting and teaching about water equality. There were 10 activities covering topics such as what the difference between a healthy stream and healthy drinking water is, what happens when a landfill leaks, safe practices in streams, chemical properties of water, and more.
“We had about 40 or 50 attendees join us to learn and participate in the different activities,” said Eilers. “It was a good day, and we hope the week of activities prompted both our students and the public to remember why water preservation and water quality is important to our daily lives.”
While Water Education Week has concluded, Academic Outreach will be hosting its final stream monitoring of the year Dec. 6, monitoring Tanyard, Champion, and Tobler Creeks. No training is required to participate. If you are interested in Georgia Adopt-A-Stream, contact Eilers at ruth.eilers@gcsu.edu.