Hey! I’m Richard Yones, and this is my Watershed Reflection.
In this picture, there is a storm drain cover with a “No Dumping” sign next to it. This storm drain was found near the UGA Veterinary College building. What I noticed about this picture is not the particular drain sign, but instead the numerous storm drains labeled as such on campus. If I had a penny for every “No Dumping” sign we saw on this scavenger hunt alone, I would probably have about 13 pennies (honestly, that’s a lot of pennies). That being said, this one picture alone obviously doesn’t capture the number of storm drains in the area, much less the whole campus. Before coming to UGA, I had never seen a “No Dumping” sign by a storm drain; I didn’t even know they existed. I believe many people would walk past the drains on campus and write them off as just useless holes in the ground, and most people wouldn’t even care enough to read the signage. The reason that we cannot dump things into the storm drain is that it leads directly to the river. The presence of so many storm drains like this one tells me that UGA is a college campus that values its environment and the land it lives on. In a world that has little regard for water safety, it is comforting to see notices like this posted all over campus.