It has been a WHILE!

Kyle here, it's been a while since i've last posted and i am wondering if anyone still follows the SHS envi-sci blog!?! I am now a junior and i am looking for colleges and i may want to go into the Environmental Science field.

Twisted Limbs

Interested in a rainbarrel?

On January 27th at 6:00 the Scituate High School NEED Project will be hosting Energy Night 2009

At this family event, students will present hundreds of ideas for you to save energy, save money, and reduce your ecological footprint. Learn ways to save your family money while saving energy and making our air and water cleaner and safer. This will help us move toward a more sustainable society and a more secure nation. Your feedback about students’ displays will provide meaningful recognition of student achievement and help drive improvement of students’ communications skills. Door prizes, children’s activities, and refreshments will be provided. In case if inclement weather please visit http://www.shsenvisci.blogspot.com/ for updated information. We hope to see you on January 14th and 27th!

Solution to a Water Related Problem

Many people do not realize exactly how much clean water you waste by watering your lawn. It is one of the highest uses of water in Rhode Island!! Rain water is not necessarily clean enough to drink right when in comes from the sky, but it is perfect for watering lawns. In fact this is one of rain’s natural purposes already. So instead of tapping into your ground water or using the water purified by our municipal water suppliers to water your lawn, you can use a rain barrel. The rain barrel attaches right to your roof and collects the rain water into a large barrel with a nozzle where it can be stored until you need to water your lawn. Also, collecting the rain off the roof and putting it to good use prevents it from running off paved surfaces and picking up harmful substances on its way to larger water bodies.

Flow Presentation

Many people today purchase bottled water. All over this country, and others, millions of bottles are bought. Unfortunately, many people dispose of these bottles even if there is still a lot of liquid left. This all adds up, and there is tons of water wasted that was once clean drinking water. This is not the only problem with disposable water bottles. They are made out of plastic, and almost everyone knows that they can be recycled. Yet most people just throw their bottles away with regular trash. This is extremely wasteful – all of these bottles could be reused to make other plastic products. The solution, ideally, would be to always recycle and finish your drinks. However, this being the world that we live in, that would not happen. Too many people have too little initiative to help the world. The ultimate solution is to stop buying bottled water. This would save plastic, which means it would save petroleum – the fossil fuel we so much depend on. It would also save water, which is something that we will soon need to start doing more, because of the growing population. To learn more about how the bottled water industry is hurting communities, come to our film screening of FLOW on Wednesday, January 14th at 5:30 in the Scituate High School Auditorium.

Possible Solutions To Local Runoff Problem

Last week, Katherine Kowalczyk, an environmental engineer from Fuss & O’Neil, and Gina DeMarco from the Northern Rhode Island Conservation District returned our class to review options for solving the runoff problem on Rockland Rd. These were the three options presented:

In the end, we selected the Filter Strip design because it offers the best reduction in flow rate of the runoff and the greatest likelihood that contaminants will be filtered by the soil surrounding the basin before the water reaches the stream.