At Chinook Middle School in SeaTac, Lisa Zander’s science class and after-school environment club teamed up with EarthGen to learn about their local watershed and the impacts of stormwater on the environment. Over the years, this partnership evolved, centered on EarthGen’s Stormwater Stewards science unit. The students surveyed their campus and identified several stormwater management issues. These included regular flooding of their playfield and stormwater runoff from their school’s roof carrying harmful pollutants into both groundwater and the local watershed.
Lisa’s after-school club worked alongside a landscape designer to explore and design solutions to manage stormwater runoff and reduce flooding on their playfield. EarthGen helped bring their plan to fruition. Working alongside dozens of community partners and volunteers, students planted 250 trees and shrubs, establishing a native forest habitat and rain garden that will increase the tree canopy and filter stormwater. They also installed cisterns to collect and reuse rainwater from nearby buildings. In the coming year, EarthGen will partner with Lisa and her students to host a training for Chinook teachers on how to utilize their new outdoor space in their lessons.