STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

“This is going to make a great fish face,” Kaia Wolfrom said, as she picked up a two-liter plastic soda bottle.

She squeezed the bottle, flattening it in the process. Then she made a couple snips before cutting off the flat bottom. She painted the inside pink, added a couple blue eyes made out of plastic lids and held up her fish for all to see.

The fish was destined for the watershed that was growing in the hallway outside Wolfrom’s science class at Wood River Middle School.

And it was not lost on Wolfrom and her classmates that the plastic bottles and lids they were using to build fish, plants and river currents represented some of the very things that are causing the demise of fish and other creatures that rely on rivers, oceans and their habitat.

The Classroom Enrichment program was facilitated by the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and sponsored by Wendy and Alan Pesky with additional support from Albertsons. It purposely used Evian Spring Water, Dr. Pepper and other plastic bottles to create the watershed.

“We wanted to help the students understand what a watershed is and why it’s important and to consider what our responsibilities are concerning it,” said Susie Quinn Fortner, SVCA arts education coordinator and teacher. “We hope this concrete experience will be something that sticks with them.”

Science teacher Steve Poklemba, who taught the classes along with teacher Andy Martone,  showed the youngsters a slide show that included a sign warning “Danger: Eating Fish Can Cause Cancer.”

“You’d be surprised how many water quality advisory signs there are along the East Coast,” he told the students. “More than 50 percent of our nation’s waters are impaired because of pollution. Our water comes from Indian Creek, from the mountain streams of Idaho, and it doesn’t get any better than that. But, as the water moves downstream, more and more pollutants build up.

“Our irrigation water, our drinking water, our manufactured goods, our recreation and our tourism also depends on clean healthy watersheds. What would happen if Redfish Lake was so polluted nobody could swim there?” he added.

The 240 kids involved in the project hung plastic cutouts representing raindrops and snowdrops from the tallest recesses of the ceiling in the hallway. Then they created a waterfall of plastic bottles that cascaded into a river of plastic as it made its way down the hall.

The young science students created plastic fish swimming in the river and plastic flowers and plants depicting the riparian areas on the walls alongside the river. The fish near the end of the river looked mutated, the plants a little bedraggled because of the cascading pollution.

The goals of the Classroom Enrichment program, which SVCA offers every year, are to support student learning in a core subject while providing teachers with the ways to use arts in their teaching, said Katelyn Foley, director of education and humanities for The Center.

This particular project was inspired by Chinese artist Wang Zhiyuan, who has created art installations galvanized by the plastic trash littering the streets of Beijing.

“It’s nice to partner with The Center for the Arts. Art and science go very well together because most of science is visual,” said Poklemba. “Creating a watershed is a big concept for kids to understand—it’s not just water but it’s also the rocks, plants and inhabitants in that water. And, hopefully, this project illustrates that.”

Student Jake Iman said he’s learned how watersheds are separated by ridgelines and canyons through the study.

“It’s been an interesting project” he said.

“It’s fun to be able to team up with the other science class and make stuff,” added Ashley Eggers. “Plus, I learned what a watershed is. I will look at bodies of water differently from now on.”

When the 3D waterfall and river comes down, the plastic won’t be thrown in the trash cans.

“It will go into plastic recycling,” said Quinn Fortner. “Not every family recycles so we want to enlighten students about recycling in hopes that they’ll go home and encourage their families to recycle.”

DID YOU KNOW?

A new study shows that drinking from a plastic water bottle likely means ingesting micro-plastic particles.

The study by Orb Media and researchers at the State University of New York at Fredonia was carried out on more than 250 water bottles sourced from 11 brands in nine different countries. It found micro-plastic contamination in more than 90 percent of the samples.

Samples included such brands as Aquafina, Dasani, Evian, Nestle and San Pellegrino.

That said, it’s unclear what effect consumption of these tiny bits of plastic the width of a hair could have on human health. Scientists at the European Food Safety Authority say most of it could pass through a human body but that some could lodge in the gut or lymphatic system.