Through service learning and partnerships with the UGA Watershed Network and UGA Office of Sustainability, our students have become a community workforce helping to develop efforts to inform the public about issues related to water quality on our campus.
We are focusing on two major projects related to targeted outreach:
Outreach with Clarke Central High School Students: Bacteria, in particular fecal coliform are a major issue in contaminating streams. Due to uncontrolled use of antibiotics in agriculture, we are now dealing with a worldwide epidemic of harmful bacteria that are now no longer treatable with antibiotics. As a class we will be spending a week investigating the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the soils around Athens. In Trail Creek alone, two cattle farms were observed with no barriers to prevent cattle from entering and crossing tributaries and on more than one occasion, cows have been observed on the banks and in the streams. Another common agricultural practice likely in the watershed is the use of manure as fertilizer. When it rains, this manure can runoff into the stream and may contribute fecal coliform bacteria to Trail Creek. Everyone in the class will collect their own soil samples from somewhere in Athens and then we will spend a day in the lab culturing the bacteria that you find. As an outreach for this project, we will be collaborating with Environmental Science students at Clarke Central High School on Milledge Avenue to help them plate their bacterial samples. Several students will be needed to attend one class session to help the students analyze their data.
Targeted outreach campaign for Dumpster Maintenance. Improperly maintained dumpsters are in violation of Athens-Clarke County’s illicit discharge ordinance. Watershed UGA needs students to (a) take the database developed for Lily Branch and Tanyard Branch and re-survey these dumpsters to determine their compliance status; (b) develop a dumpster database for the Lake Herrick Watershed; and (c) develop an education and outreach campaign (to include a broad plan and then actual literature, public service announcements, etc. to implement the campaign) aimed at those dumpster owners who are not in compliance with the local ordinance in all of the campus watersheds. This project would include figuring out the best way to reach these audiences, preparing materials/presentations, and distributing them.