Print Email

Teenagers with spray paint roaming the city when school's in session might sound like trouble.

But Tuesday morning, it was for a good cause.

About 50 eighth-graders from Lakewood Middle School broke into groups of about a half-dozen each, fanning out across north Salina to spread the word about keeping trash and dangerous chemicals out of lakes and rivers.

Armed with maps of storm drains provided by the city of Salina, the students used stencils to paint messages such as "Drains to Stream -- Keep it Clean."

And as they walked through neighborhoods, they also put on doors fliers that contained tips about how to keep pollution from running into storm drains, and handed out brochures to people they met.

One drain that was tagged was in Shelly Grandy's front yard at 212 S. Front; when she came out to see what was going on, Malieque Tolbert and Rachael Bledsoe handed her one of the Environmental Protection Agency-produced brochures and explained what they were doing.

"This is a really cool idea," Grandy said, as she walked out to the street to see the message.

Grandy runs Little Darlings Academy preschool. She started talking with science teacher Susan Coykendall, who said she and some of her students are available to make presentations on issues such as recycling and would love to talk to the Little Darlings students. Grandy took Coykendall's phone number.

"This is really an awesome project," said Maddy Livengood, as her group worked on some drains at the edge of Oakdale Park. "It's something the whole community can see and learn about -- a lot of the things we do are in school, and only other kids can see it."

Livengood said she has helped with cleanup projects in the Smoky Hill River before. She hopes this project results in less trash to clean out in the future.

Coykendall hoped to get roughly 120 storm drains tagged Tuesday and today out of roughly 3,300 in the city.

"The stencils we'll keep, so we can do this again next year," she said.

She added that some cities keep stencils and paint available to be loaned out, so groups such as Boy Scouts can borrow them and mark drains. She's considering making the stencils available to community groups.

The paint, stencils and brochures were paid for with an $830 grant from the EPA. The grant was announced back in March. Several teams of students at Lakewood submitted grant proposals. Also awarded was a $2,050 grant to buy radon-detection kits for students to take home.

Bobby Tech was on the team that turned in the radon-testing grant proposal, and was also on one of Tuesday's tagging teams.

He said roughly half of the 500 homes tested showed high radon levels.

"Some were as high as 16 (picoCuries per liter)" Tech said. The EPA considers levels of 4 pC/L to be dangerous.

The part of town tested by the Lakewood students hadn't been tested previously; in 1988, the Salina-Saline County Health Department sold radon test kits, but few ended up in the low-income neighborhoods north of Crawford Street and west of Ohio Street.

n Reporter Mike Strand can be reached at 822-1418 or by email at mstrand@salina.com.

Discuss This Story:

Email this story to a friend:

Subject:

Recipient:

Sender's email (required):



Enter text seen above: