Lake Champlain Watershed Demonstration

We've been learning all about how Lake Champlain helps our town of Colchester!!  We had an amazing presentation this week from Stephanie Larkin, who works at the Lake Champlain Basin Program.  She came to UMS to talk to all of the second graders about Lake Champlain and how we can (inadvertently) hurt as well as help the lake. We talked about some of the major lake pollutants such as soil, manure, grass clippings, oil, factory waste, pesticides, salt, and gasoline. People use these products to help make their daily life easier.  However, we use them without thinking of the consequences when these products end up in the lake after a rainstorm. After we talked about these pollutants, we talked about ways to help keep the lake clean and free from pollutants.  People can "scoop the poop" when they have animals, we can plant trees, shrubs, and grass to keep soil from eroding into the lake, put fences around farms, create wetlands to help filter out pollutants, and post signs on storm drains that go directly to the lake. Picking up litter also keeps trash from getting into the lake.  The lake offers so many wonderful benefits to the town of Colchester like supplying our drinking water, providing various types of recreation like swimming and boating, we receive money from tourists coming to visit our town, some people even eat fish from the  lake. With all of these great benefits of having the lake in our town we want to protect it! Here are some pictures from our hands-on experiment!