October Classroom: MSD Sewer Tagging

In 8th grade our October Classroom Expedition is a science/water based one...however, for the social studies part, we referred back to what we learned in our 7th grade Geography unit about reading maps and locating various places on them so we were able to locate the sewer/storm drains in Maplewood and Richmond Heights.

Before we set out to find these storm drains, we first got a personalized presentation from Dona at St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District about what should go down the storm drains and what really does.  We then discussed the importance that ONLY rain water should go down these storm drains; that everything else that goes down there ends up going into the streams (and those then become our drinking water!), so it's really important that you don't dump things down the storm drains and that only rain water goes down them.

We then set out with our maps in hand to go tag and label the untagged storm drains throughout Maplewood and Richmond Heights.  Overall, in the two full days we spent "tagging" storm drains, we tagged almost 200 drains in the MRH area!  Wow!  Great work MRHMS 8th graders!!  MSD was super proud of all of your hard work!