WELCH, W.Va.– Over 180 fourth grade students in McDowell County will be learning about good water awareness practices to promote the stewardship of water sources in West Virginia.
Students from Bradshaw, Laeger, Fall River, Welch, and Kimble Elementary Schools will be meeting at Linkous Park in Welch Thursday for the McDowell County Water Festival.
West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Project Water Education Today (WET) Coordinator, Tomi Bergstrom said it’s a one-day outdoor learning experience for the students that will teach them what do with the water sources accessible to them.
“We try to highlight the local water resources for the students so that they can learn more about it, see what they can do to help out, and kind of take ownership of it and be an environmental steward for their community,” Bergstrom said.
Hosted by the West Virginia DEP and Reconnecting McDowell, Bergstrom said the event started before Covid but now they are aiming to bring it back on an annual basis.
The students will be learning about fish and aquatic life native to West Virginia along the Tug Fork River next to the park. There they will also learn about groundwater, pollution and ways to prevent it, among other topics which Bergstrom said are all about how water moves across the planet.
“That will tie into the water cycle and the different phases of matter that water moves through, we’ll also be talking about how much water we actually have available to drink in comparison to all of the water that we have on our planet,” she said.
She said the students will get the opporunity to look at the aquatic life under magnifying glasses and see how they determine the health of the rivers and streams. She also said they will be taken underground to a soil tunnel where they will see how water imacts the soil, as well.
Bergstrom said the WET project wanted to do something to recognize the work being done along the Tug Fork, and said that when they take the time to recognize West Virginia’s water sources, it tends to garner a lot of attention, particularly from younger audiences.
“A lot of times when we get students outside of their traditional classroom settings and we get them out in the environment, showing them their local water resources and engaging them with various hands-on activities, we really see a lot of interest in students wanting to take ownership of that river and being proud of what they have,” she said.
She said they have already held water festivals in Fayette, Nicholas, and Kanawha Counties this spring, and that the DEP tries to partner with local watershed organizations whenever they can.
“We’re very, very happy to be having these events again, especially in Southern West Virignia, and we’re really fortunate to have so many partners pulling in wanting to support it, because, I’m stationed in Charleston and I do this project statewide and it’s absolutely not possible without local partners wanting to participate and support it,” Bergsrom said.
She said it’s all about teaching future generations the importance of preserving the Mountain State’s many bodies of water.
“We look at water as our most precious resource that we have, and so we’re going to be trying to convey that, making sure that the students understand that it is a resource, and that once it gets really, really polluted, then that’s a major problem for our community,” said Bergstrom.