It’s not unusual to see teens hanging out around water during hot summer afternoons. On Tuesday, one group gathered at Rapid Creek to learn about water quality and urban runoff. The program gave students a hands-on experience in science.
Dr. Scott Kenner is a professor with the Civil Environmental Engineering Department at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He stands next to a section of Rapid Creek questioning a small group of middle and high school students.
The students are part of the Rural America Initiative, or RAI, program—a non-profit organization for in-need Native American families in Rapid City.
They’re participating in a fellowship that teaches kids about water quality.
“Today we’re introducing students to the cycle of water as it rains on the urban watershed, runs off and gets polluted because we change the land use.”
Kenner scoops rocks and water samples from the creek. He points out bugs to the kids and tries to get them to answer questions.
“How do we prevent that pollution and then what’s its impact on Rapid Creek? And then who receives all that runoff? So we’re kind of teaching them about the whole cycle. We want to get them interested in science but also to be educated about how we live effects our environment. And whatever they choose to pursue, they’ll always have in their mind ‘oh, I’m impacting and I can make decisions about not impacting as well—picking up that trash and promoting low impact development for urban drainage’ as they grow up.”
The students also attended several water runoff classes on the Mines campus. Dr. Jennifer Benning is an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She talks to the group about rain water.
Benning: “A lot of times it will fall off the rooftops, straight into the gutter, straight into the drive way and then straight into the roads and then straight into the storm sewers. And then where does it go from the storm sewer?”
Student: “Into the creeks.”
Benning: “Yeah, into the creeks. That’s what happens in Rapid City.”
Benning flips through images on a projector to show students examples of water runoff.
Benning: “What are some of the problems for people when we start doing that?”
Student: “It gets dirty.”
Benning: “It gets dirty, yeah! It’s getting polluted because…”
“So that was getting the kids to explore what we call low impact development strategies. So that’s also referred to also as Green Infrastructure or Sustainable Development. It’s ways to still develop but to do it intelligently and in a way that’s protective of water resources.”
The program was funded by a grant from the EPA. Benning says the grant is being used to promote Green Infrastructure in Rapid City and protect water quality.
“A big part of that is trying to do outreach to local professionals about these techniques and these strategies for low impact development. So we’ve met with a lot of local engineers and developers. But a big part of that too is our reach to children to increase their awareness. Hopefully maybe get them interested in pursuing degrees and studying these things in the future.”
The campus was mostly empty as the students traveled from building to building. Whitney Rencountre is an Ateyapi Program Coordinator at RAI.
“We work with the students. Spend a full day with them—Monday thru Thursdays we have about a 10 hour day. We take them through the Black Hills showing them the sacred sites of the Lakota and Dakota people and teach them about the importance of the Black Hills to our ancestors. And then we take them out to swim, hike, fish just to kind of enjoy the scenery here in the Black Hills. And so we spend a lot of time outdoors with them.”
Rencountre says the day’s activities give the students an opportunity to explore the campus.
“We felt that it would be a great opportunity for the kids to get experience with the field and spend a day on the college campus here. It hopefully inspired them to want to pursue this field weather it’s chemistry, biology, engineering—the different options they will have as they finish school.”
He says RAI and Mines connect the college’s studies and environmental work to Lakota culture. K-12 teachers from around the state also attended the activities to learn projects to bring back to their classrooms.