Community Champions – Page 3

Schools help shape our youth and our youth are our future. In this article, we’ll discuss how we work with schools, share the Flows To Bay teacher toolkit and contest, and announce the winners of our second Flows to Bay High School contest!

How Do We Work with Schools?

Our school outreach program aims to educate and inspire environmental problem-solving in school-aged children and their parents through a county-wide contest. This year, we tied school outreach into our Flows to Bay Challenge by providing participating classes with workshop opportunities and tips on how to reduce water pollution on school campuses, and thinking of innovative ways to capture and reuse rainwater. By partnering with teachers to educate students, we hope to encourage critical thinking and a sense of environmental responsibility among youths in San Mateo County.

Teacher Toolkit and Flows to Bay High School Contest:

The Flows to Bay High School contest is open to all high school students in San Mateo County. We encourage students to brainstorm in small groups and submit mock proposals of projects that will help “green” their school campus. These projects could literally involve greening schoolyards, by creating concepts for rain gardens or rainwater capture and reuse facilities —also known as rain barrels. We provide a teacher toolkit to educate students about the issues and get them excited about the contest. This year, our toolkit highlighted three key themes for stormwater pollution prevention:

Rainwater as a Resource
Litter Reduction and Removal
Removing and Replacing Toxics

Students are encouraged to take these broader ideas and concepts and generate new ways of managing stormwater, litter, and chemicals at their schools to reduce the impact. Many students tap into their creative and engineering sides to propose compelling solutions that really could hold water!

Winning Student Proposals:

After reviewing all the submissions (19 classes countywide) the Flows To Bay team selected three winning proposals for our contest:

1. Grizzlies Go Green Club from Jefferson High School: In this proposal from Jefferson High School, students created a project designed to reduce litter at their school by installing water bottle refill stations. These refill stations will target plastic bottle litter at their school and provide a more appealing alternative to regular drinking fountains. In addition to these refill stations, the students proposed to hang up educational posters at each of the stations to teach students more about stormwater pollution.

2. Evelyn, Alexandra, and Valentina from Menlo-Atherton High School: This proposal presented by students from Menlo-Atherton High School targets recycling efforts and littering education at their school. Their proposal includes providing teachers with educational materials, developing a waste reduction plan that involves the entire student body, creating litter programs, and investigating and implementing green purchasing programs. All of these actions will help achieve their goals of promoting a sustainable and environmentally-aware school culture and encouraging student participation and leadership.

3. Alex, Justin, and Ethan from Carlmont High School: These students from Carlmont High school proposed a plan that utilizes green infrastructure to target flooding and stormwater ponding at their school. More specifically, they suggest implementing rain gardens and swales that will alleviate flooding issues in certain parts of the school. Additionally, they proposed replacing regular pavement with permeable pavement to prevent standing water in walkways and lunch areas of the school.

Congratulations to our winning proposals! We were impressed with all of the creative solutions students proposed to improve their schools. As a reward for the hard work, we have partnered with the Marine Science Institute to give the each of the winning students an Ecovoyage. During the Ecovoyage, students will get to tour the San Francisco Bay via boat, partaking in hands-on activities such as water quality monitoring, fish identification and plankton drags!

We want to thank everyone for all their efforts and hard work. If you’re interested in learning more about our school outreach programs or want your students/children to get involved, feel free to contact us with any questions!

Results are in from the first San Mateo Countywide FlowsToBay High School Green Infrastructure Contest. This contest was open to high school students and probed them to learn about stormwater pollution and green infrastructure solutions through creating a green infrastructure proposal for their high school campus, which addressed a specific environmental or water quality issue that affects their school community.

The winning proposal was submitted by four students in Ms. Stephanie Owens’ Biology and Environmental Science class at Menlo-Atherton High School. Students Alondra, Danny, Kate and Kevin’s proposal offered a solution to the excessive flooding in the parking lot that makes student pick-up treacherous during the rainy season. Their design focused on replacing the impervious and slick asphalt throughout the parking lot with permeable pavement, which would allow stormwater to infiltrate into the underlying soils, promoting pollutant treatment and groundwater recharge as well as preventing unnecessary slippage and flooding that has inconvenienced the students. This project demonstrates a primary goal of green infrastructure – to reduce the amount of impervious surfaces in our landscape and to allow more rainwater to soak back into the ground rather than flush pollutants from streets into local waterways as it channels through gutters and pipes. The students also included a plan to place posters around the campus and near the affected areas to educate their classmates about permeable pavement, its purpose, and long term benefits. The second place winners were from Carlmont High School in Belmont with teacher Ms. Veronica Heintz.

As the environmental challenges we face continue to increase in scope and severity, it will be up to our younger generation of students and scientists to devise innovative solutions to tackle these problems that affect the health and well-being of us all. Through thinking globally about these interconnected environmental challenges and smarter ways to address them, we can act locally to enact change in our schools, homes, and communities.

Patsy Vargas at work at the South City Car Wash (photo: Megan Kang)

Twenty-three years ago, Patsy Vargas walked across the street to her local car wash and asked for a job as a cashier. Now, after two decades of hard work she is the dedicated manager of the South City Car Wash in South San Francisco, which brings together the community and the environment in a professional car wash.

Professional car washes are a key method of keeping our local waterways clean. In contrast, washing a car on the street or in a driveway leads to dirty, soapy water ending up in our storm drains and flowing out to creeks, the bay, and the ocean. At South City Car Wash and other local San Mateo county car washes, car owners can also become a part of a larger, eco-friendly community in San Mateo.

Recognized by the San Mateo Countywide Water Pollution Prevention Program as a pollution prevention partner dedicated to protecting the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in 2015, the South City Car Wash has been family-owned and operated since 1954. In 1974, after the financial crisis associated with the oil embargo, the car wash evolved into an award-winning organization for their efforts in saving water.

The South City Car Wash constructed an innovative water pit on-site which recycles nearly 80% of the water used. Considering that each car wash uses approximately 40 to 60 gallons of water, only 8 to 12 gallons of fresh water is needed per wash. In comparison, a 10-minute home car wash uses 40 to 100 gallons of freshwater, none of which is recycled. Since the South City Car Wash cleans over a hundred cars per day, the business alone saves nearly 5,000 gallons of water per day, which makes a difference in keeping the San Francisco Bay healthy.

And Patsy makes sure everything goes smoothly there every day. Her pride is evident as she describes her role at the car wash by saying, “I run everything around here. There are 25 boys to take care of. I’m the big mama.” She is the first one to arrive in the morning, last one to leave, and to top it off she walks an average of 15 miles a day to make it all happen.

Bob Cavalieri, owner of the South City Car Wash, adds in an admiring tone, “She has treated [the car wash] like her own business. Patsy is phenomenal.”

In an era of fast digital communications and anonymity, the South City Car Wash retains its roots by fostering deep relationships with its clients and its workers. During her time working there Patsy has, “seen [customers] as babies and now they’re driving a car. We’re doing something right. I get to know their families and form that bond between customers.” She adds, “It’s like a big family [here]. When I got married, my flowers, photography, and priest all came together because my customers helped me out.”.

By uniting eco-friendliness within the greater San Mateo community, warm people like Patsy and businesses such as the South City Car Wash are sure to welcome future car drivers and encourage them to keep the San Francisco Bay and all our local waterways clean.

And until the end of August, you can get a 20% discount at South City Car Wash here. Do your part to save water and keep our bay clean!

Do you belong to a group that hosts events for people who care about making San Mateo County a healthier community? As you can see from our calendar and our Facebook page, we promote the good work of our partner cities, watershed stewardship groups, and envionmental non-profits already.

But there are lots of civic and volunteer groups that contribute without thinking of themselves as environmental. If your group helps County residents do the right thing (in their homes, while shopping, gardening, driving, boating, taking care of pets, and more), let us know! You are part of the team effort for clean water and a healthy community. We’ll be happy to share that news with our contacts, and send supporters your way.