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Welcome to Plum Landing.
"Water Carries Everything."
Today we're on a mission for Plum.
We're picking up litter near the river.
We want to help keep the river clean.
We're collecting trash so that our environment can be cleaner.
We're wearing gloves
and we're using trash bags to put in the garbage.
This is a good way for kids to help.
I'm Ella C., and I'm here with Ella F., Eissa and Jordin,
and also Jordin's mom, Doreen, and Eissa's mom, Isra.
It looks very muddy,
and it looks like there are pieces of trash
not floating through the river, but stuck in it.
It's kind of like when Plum sent the kids rafting down the river.
The water carried trash with it, and some if it got caught
in the roots of a tree.
I'm drawing a small little river that gets into a bigger river
and there are some pieces of trash.
We're going to meet Julie.
She's a scientist
from the Charles River Watershed Association.
She tests the water to see how clean it is.
Hi, guys.
Hi.
What are you doing?
We're cleaning up the river.
That's great.
It's great to get the litter
before it runs off into the river.
Anything we put down on the ground here
is going to end up in the river.
Sometimes when animals see litter or trash,
they think it's their food
and they eat it and it can hurt them.
Are there any other kinds of pollution in this river?
Yes, there is.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of pollutants that we can't see.
A pollutant is something that is harmful
to the environment, like trash.
So you guys want to see the ways we look
for some of that other pollution?
Yes!
All right, guys, we're going to run some tests
to try and see what kind of pollution,
the kind that you can't see, might be in this waterway.
To do the testing, we need to collect some water.
First, we needed to measure the temperature of the water.
This is a thermometer
that's going to take the water's temperature.
Sometimes when rainwater runoff comes in
off of a very hot roadway,
it can actually increase the temperature of the water,
which can be uncomfortable for fish and other wildlife.
It's ..
Then we tested the water for phosphate.
Julie told us that people use phosphate to make grass grow.
When it rains or people water their lawns,
the water runs off into the street
and the phosphate can get into the river.
A small amount is okay,
but a large amount is harmful to the river.
So I think we're looking at a reading of ..
That's not uncommon after a rainstorm to see some signs
of nutrient pollution coming into your river.
My mom is going to do the next test.
It's called our Secchi disk.
So we have this disk
with a very distinct black-and-white pattern on it,
and we're going to drop it down into the river.
The Secchi disk tells us how cloudy the water is,
which shows us how much sediment or dirt is in the water.
When the water is cloudy,
it can be a problem for fish and other animals.
The white part has turned brown.
It must have a little bit of dirt in it
because it's much more white when it's not in the water.
Julie says there's some extra phosphate in the water,
but the temperature is good and there's not too much sediment,
so overall, the river is pretty clean.
So thanks, you guys, for your efforts
both to test the water and to help keep it clean.
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