Oh No! Not Down the Drain!

A children’s play about storm drains wins a major public educator award from the New England Water Environment Association

The Needham (Mass.) Department of Public Works was seeking a way to complete the educational requirement of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program.

Kevin Keith, assistant superintendent of the Water and Sewer Department, worked with the Needham Science Center to develop a 30-minute play that taught grades K-5 how stormwater drains function. The play correlated with the youngsters’ science unit on condensation and precipitation.

Anne Schloder, then head of the Science Center, was the narrator. She gave a small PowerPoint presentation about how rain happens and where it goes. Besides pictures of catch basins, she held up a plastic foam replica of a storm grate.

One woman from the Science Center wore a costume with white clouds on one side and gray rain clouds on the other. Another woman, dressed as a frog, explained how trash and pollution dumped down catch basins could harm her home.

Up with the curtain

The curtain then rose on a working drain system built by the Science Center. The prop was an elevated rain barrel that appeared to be connected by PVC pipe to a half-full aquarium. However, a funnel inside the barrel physically connected to the pipe. The aquarium ­was labeled “Charles River.”

The audience first watched Schloder pour “rain” into the barrel and the water level rise in the aquarium. Next, she dropped sticks, rocks and candy wrappers into the barrel, illustrating how a little trash allowed some water to pass, but lots of it blocked the flow. Water not destined for the aquarium was poured directly into the barrel.

The children were told to call Mr. Keith from Public Works to unclog the drain. “I was dressed in OSHA-compliant equipment, and climbed a small ladder to reach the top of the barrel,” says Keith. “Using a long-handled ‘poop scoop’ to simulate our clam buckets, I started pulling out garbage. The more I removed, the more water flowed to the ‘Charles River.’”

To demonstrate pollution, Schloder used red food coloring to simulate vehicles leaking hydraulic fluid, soapy water to simulate washing a car, and water-based children’s paints to simulate oil and white paint. The audience watched the water in the aquarium become dirty.

Making deputies

“We closed the play by deputizing the kids as part of our Storm Drain TASK Force, and gave them little magnetic badges,” says Keith. TASK stands for:

• Teach about storm drains

• Alert people about pollution

• Spot storm drains near you

• Keep storm drains clean.

Each class then toured the town’s drain-cleaning, camera, clamshell, flushing and rodding trucks in the school parking lot. “We had a video playing in the camera truck that showed the rodder removing tree roots inside a drain,” says Keith. “The camera was on, enabling the kids to look at the lens and see themselves on the monitor. Another video showed a raccoon running away from the camera. It reaffirmed how all the culverts and openings lead to brooks, streams and rivers where animals live.”

Some 2,000 pupils from the town’s five elementary schools took part in the program. The presentation had such a positive effect that kids now wave at Public Works crews. If Keith is walking through town, his TASK deputies greet him by name.

“We’ve received phone calls and e-mails from parents expressing how much their children enjoyed the day,” he says. “The icing on the cake was winning the Public Educator Award.”



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