A Watershed Moment

The Rye Garden Club Conservation Committee recently presented its EnviroScape Program to second and third graders in Debra Simpson’s science class at Rye Country Day School.

By Kathleen Durkee

The Rye Garden Club Conservation Committee recently presented its EnviroScape Program to second and third graders in Debra Simpson’s science class at Rye Country Day School.

The EnviroScape is a model of a watershed, with its surface representing the landscape of a coastal region much like Rye.

Rye Garden Club members, along with students, modeled what occurs when various pollutants such as trash, fertilizers, oil, and industrial toxins are introduced to the land surface, and are then washed away by rainwater.

When sprinkled with “pollutants” (cocoa, sesame oil, paper shreds, food dye) and doused with rainwater (happy students with spray bottles), the model vividly demonstrates how pollutants eventually contaminate our waterways and ultimately the ocean.