Archive for April, 2008
Knowledge is like a virus in that once you learn one thing, it is hard to stop it from stretching into learning another. The simple act of reading or listening can cause a word or an idea to hang in your mind until another comes across and makes the connection permanent. It is as though we are all our own zone of proximal development. On April 23rd I was lucky enough to work with the Friends of the Bronx Zoo to, ostensibly train or re train 7 people in water quality monitoring. The zoo has a history of monitoring several FOZ were interested in getting back into the flow. As I spoke about pH and buffers, I had a fairly clear idea that I knew what I was talking about. As I added water to the pH 4 buffer, I wanted to show how to dilute it and raise the pH. Instead, it actually went down before hovering back around pH 4. “You have just proved that it is a buffer,” Dione, one of the FOZ said. “That is why it is a buffer, and not just a solution with a pH of 4. It is making sure that the pH stays stable.” I thanked my student and then moved on. Dione, as it turns out, has a PhD in chemistry and should have been the one speaking to the group. But, that little thing she pointed out to me sent me off to look for more information.
One of the parameters that the Bronx River Stewards measure is pH. Most people know something about pH and its relationship to acids and bases, but just what does that mean, and why is it important to our river? What does the pH level tell us?
The term pH is derived from the French puissance d’hydrogene, meaning “strength of hydrogen”, referring to the hydrogen ion that affects acidity. The pH scale runs from 0-14 with values less than 7 being acidic and values greater than 7 being basic. At 7, there is equilibrium between the two. The scale is logarithmic, with each level having a difference of a power of ten from the other. So pH 5 is ten times more acidic than pH 6.
pH values of natural water vary, but below 5 or above 9 are detrimental to organisms, and normal values range from 6.5 to 8.5. Most aquatic life, however, has adapted to specific pH and sustained change can cause damage to a population.
To counter these changes, natural water acts as a buffer. A buffer resists change, like the pillows that my wife and I pile up to keep my 8 month old away from of the stereo. She pushes against them, put they bounce back, and Bethania cannot change my radio station (NPR builds vocabulary). The Bronx River Stewards use buffers of set values, 4, 7 or 10, to make sure that the pH meter is working correctly. The pH values of these solutions can only be changed by adding a buffer of a differing value. Natural water should react in the same way; using the natural hydrology to create a buffer against change. The problems occur when either a stronger acid (acid rain, pH 5.6) or a stronger base (concrete washout water>12) enters the system and causes a rapid change to the pH level.
But a pH change can be a secondary effect as well. For example, photosynthesis uses up dissolved carbon dioxide (pH 6.3) effectively raising the pH level. On days when photosynthesis is most likely, such as sunny days during the growing season, the pH level of the river may rise. But what appears to be a natural effect may have very human causes. Fertilizers and human waste, both generally acidic compounds which enter the Bronx River on a regular basis through stormwater runoff (CSOs) and illegal sewage connections (Yonkers), increase plant growth and even the algae blooms recently noted on the river. So the introduction of an acid causes a basic reaction. Organic respiration at night produces CO2 thereby lowering pH levels and dissolved oxygen levels, as does the massive decomposition that follows mortality.
The level of pH in the Bronx needs to be monitored closely, not just for the answer the value itself gives us, but for the chain of possible causes of that value that need to be looked into.
Thanks, Dione.
references: http://waterontheweb.org/under/streamecology/09%5Fph%2Ddraft.html, http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/journal/environment/river/is54nyc.htm, http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/hall/9111/DOC.HTML
DG
April 30th, 2008
Why do we bother teaching science to students? Do we really believe that we are teaching the next Charles Drew? Do we see in the faces of the youth around us some audacity of imagination that just might happen to advance an end to diabetes? The truth is that it is actually true. When you work with somebody who is learning something new in the world of science, some odd duende appears and you believe that this person may just make an advance in the world that will benefit us all. But that is not why science is important; It is important beyond the science itself because of the dialog that you see between the mind and the world that surrounds us. Last Friday I was lucky enough to speak with some of the interlocutors that have been involved in that dialogue at the Banana Kelly Science Fair.
Nic and Carly at Banana Kelly High School have built their ninth grade science curriculum around the Bronx River and water quality monitoring. They have also given students a window onto their world and some of the students have taken that view very seriously. As I walked between the two rooms where the Science Fair was set up, I was amazed at the amount of information that the students had sorted through and had to make sense of in the form of a presentation. There were discussions about salinity, turbidity, global warming and comparisons of the levels of pollution in the Bronx River, the Hudson River, and the Newtown Creek. Just like with adults, the depth of the discussion varied greatly across the classes, but you could feel that the dominant opinion was that the subject merited discussion.
In the interest of full disclosure, Nic and Carly put me in the difficult position of grading the projects that I viewed, a job that they face everyday. I was given a rubric and had to see where on that scale the students stood. This is necessary because the students, all of us actually, need to know that people are looking critically at everything that we say and do. The unfortunate thing is that I wrote all notes on those rubrics instead of in my notebook, besides the fact that I was a little harsh in my grading.
At any rate, many students showed that they had looked deeply into the data and asked, “Why does the salinity level change?” or “What is the relationship between the amount of precipitation and turbidity?” Then they tried to make sense of these numbers, a task they call mental mastication. The data, mostly just numbers and dates, was obviously much more to these young people; they had collected the data, seen the parts of the world they were talking about, and knew that they were talking about their world. The dialogue that they engaged in was intimate which made the information relevant.
Beyond the actual information, the off-the-cuff remarks of many of the students made me really think about what education is really about and how hard it is to judge the understanding of a student. “Maybe,” Said one, “The Bronx River is cleaner because people have been trying to clean it up. Maybe that’s what the Newtown Creek needs.” To be able to see beyond the first view, beyond the numbers and actually bring in a historical perspective is profound and extremely heartening. It is beyond science and into life itself.
I was glad to have been invited by Banana Kelly to this event, but I must admit that I felt a bit like W.H. Auden: “When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.” That goes for the students and their teachers as well. And for these dukes, our natural world is their court.
DG
April 21st, 2008
In tranquility, it amazes me to reflect upon the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings certain topics bring forth. Fecal coliforms being today’s origin of those feelings
I met with our Pilot Bacteria Monitors today up at Muskrat Cove as they gathered more samples near the offending outfall above Nereid Avenue. Professor JD and KS wanted to share some preliminary findings with me and let me know about the near future studies. It was a beautiful day to walk along the river and discuss fecal coliform.
The good news is the Prof. JD has decided to run a monitoring program that will cover several sites on the river and use 4 full time student monitors. The bacteria monitoring will be their focus rather than an aside, and special attention will be given to making comparisons between not only sites on the river, but dry days and wet days. This will allow for comparisons between the constant bacteria content of the river and that which is affected by the various CSOs. Hopefully this baseline data, besides helping us build a long term bacteria monitoring program, will serve to show the possible benefits of the storm water retrofits planned by Westchester and the City.
The bad news is why JD thinks this is worth dedicating time and other resources towards. Basically it comes down to numbers, and in this case the preliminary numbers are high.
According to the EPA, safe water for contact should be below a mean of 200 fecal coliform colony forming units (CFUs)per 100mL, and never rise above 400 CFUs/100ml. This number, I have learned, is still somewhat a subject for debate due to the lack of a clear definition of “swimming.” But it is their number at this time. The monitors have come up with a mean level of 184CFUs/100ml at the 174th St./Starlight Park site, which approaches the limit. But at the Muskrat Cove site, the mean so far is an astounding 1650 CFUs/100 ml! More than 8 times the legal safe water contact limit. Muskrat Cove beach will not be opening soon. These are preliminary data, still being collected and analyzed, and are meant to inform our immediate contact with the river, but the numbers are a bit frightening, from my perspective. The actual findings will be reported by our pilot team very soon.
The samples at Muskrat Cove were taken right near the, as Yonkers calls it, the McLean Avenue Outfall, meaning that the samples would get the full dosage of the illegal connections that flow into the Hillview Reservoir overflow. The level found down river, to my untrained eye, seem to show that some dilution is occurring and until further study, we can assume that the problem is not being made worse inside the border of the Bronx. Small comfort; but comfort none the less.
All officials have been notified of the Mclean Avenue outfall and the illegal hook ups that run through it: EPA, DEC, Westchester Health Department, City of Yonkers, NYS Attorney General. But I wanted to know where it might be coming from so I drove up and into the neighborhood that sits between the reservoir and the river, to get a feel for what exactly illegal connections come from. I found some large buildings, but mostly it was well kept, nice sized single family homes. Some even had American flags hanging out in front. I wondered; Do any of them know that they may very well be flushing directly into the Bronx River?
DG
April 16th, 2008
If you ever wished that you were young again, assuming you are not young, then stop. In the past week I have met a ton of young people from whom I have drawn two important conclusions: 1) There are plenty of young people out there. 2) They are doing such incredible work that they don’t need us to be mucking up the works.
On Tuesday, April 1st, I attended the Teens For Planet Earth Symposium at The Bronx Zoo. There, groups from as close by as Van Cortland Park, and as far away as Washington state came together to share some of the projects that they have been working on in their communities. The projects were as varied as the students backgrounds. The projects included invasive removal in Van Cortland Park, raising bees in Bergen County New Jersey, and raising awareness of the importance of snags, nurse logs and amphibians in Washington State. All of the groups had command of their information, and the Washington State group had even run a teacher training for their local teachers. It was very impressive, to say the least.
Then on Friday, April 4th, VOICE held a mobile workshop for the Planet youth conference. Young people from Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, Rocking the Boat, and The Point gave a tour to several other groups of young people from all over the country, including New Orleans and Richmond California. The YMPJ Youth Organizers presented their CSO campaign, gave a tour of the backyard rain barrel and rain garden system, and green roof on the church roof next door. Rocking the Boat youth met the group at CPP with rowboats and led a boat tour of Bronx River shuttled them down to Hunts Point Riverside Park and their program site. Finally, youth from The Point’s ACTION program took the group along the future Bronx River Greenway to their community center where their afterschool programs were in action and they heard about ACTION’s work. I didn’t get to stay for the later events, but I was very impressed with the energy of the participants as they discussed Environmental Justice in their world.
On Monday, April 7th, it was the YOUTH CAN Conference at the American Museum of Natural History. This time it was students from all over the world running the show, running workshops and panel discussions about worldwide environmental issues. There were elementary kids talking about watershed function and high school kids comparing water quality of rivers in New York and Bangladesh. It was amazing how much energy and excitement was out there.
So, George Bernard Shaw did not quite have it right; Youth is not wasted on the young. There are some incredible young people out there doing incredible things.
April 8th, 2008
30 high school seniors and juniors from around the country are spending a semester here in NY with Cityterm to learn about New York City. You know these students and their teachers are not only super intelligent but also know what’s hep because part of their focus is the Bronx River. To that end, these intrepid interlocutors met with Drew and myself for a short walking discussion, starting at River Park, 180th Street, strolling through the newly named West Farms Rapids, and ending in Drew Gardens, just South of Tremont Ave.
Our Environmental Issue Walk
The issues discussed varied from early Bronx History to Fish Ladders to Santeria. The guiding concept of the walk was to consider the fact that no issue exists in and of itself. There are a variety of connections that need to be made in order to understand a perceived problem before any attempt can be made to ameliorate it. Lets try to get an idea of this by using the examples given above.
We started out our talk be looking back into Bronx River History and human involvement. Previous generations made the decision that a dam was what was called for at River Park and other areas, at first for mill use, and then for the attractive look and the soothing sounds of the cascade. Now we look at it in consideration of the alewife, an indigenous anadromous fish, and see it as a barrier to normal estuarine ecology. Removal of the dam might actually disrupt life on both sides due to scour and turbidity, so a fish ladder is brought up for consideration. The construction of a ramp on one side of the dam may become what is called an “attractive nuisance,” meaning more people may want to get out there and see what it is, possibly making for a dangerous situation.
Of course, what you want is for people to get out and enjoy the river, but how is it best for them to do that? As we walked down stream, we came upon a pumpkin and a jar of honey set carefully down by the side of the river. To some it was trash, but as it was most likely an offering to Oshun, trash may very well be in the eye of the beholder, or the believer in this case.
The group finished its walk in Drew Gardens where they were treated to a great composting demonstration and given a history of community gardens, and Drew Gardens specifically, by Jennifer P. Jennifer was extremely generous with her time and answered question on topics ranging from why they don’t use horse manure in the garden to why the CSO across the river spills human manure into the river when it rains.
We hope to see this group again sometime in the near future.
DG
April 4th, 2008
