EARTH DAY
This year’s Napa County Earth Day event was held at Skyline Park on April 22, 2006. There were and estimated 1500 kids and adults that joined in the fun. The Napa Sanitation District had a booth where District staff demonstrated an Enviroscape Watershed Model. See what happens when rainwater washes pollutants to creeks or the Bay. The model includes houses, roads, industry, a farm, a construction site, a golf course, a partially logged forest, two creeks, and a bay. Onlookers identify potential pollution sources with the model, such as lawn fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, illicit industrial discharges, working on vehicles or changing oil out in the street, and parking lot oil. Our "pollution" is really cocoa and powdered drink mixes of many colors, but the kids…and adults get the picture! After the pollution has been placed on the model, they observed what happens as a squirt bottle simulates rain on the watershed. The moment the “make-believe pollutants” hit the body of water, the observers always react with some degree of horrid disgust. The colors run together in the body of water to make up a “pollution soup”. Bottom line, they learn the difference between sewer and storm systems, about watersheds and urban storm water runoff, and methods to prevent pollution from reaching our local water bodies.