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Spencer Avenue school holds assembly for World Water Day

March 23, 2017   ·   0 Comments

By Jasen Obermeyer

Grade. 7 and 8 students of Spencer Avenue Elementary School celebrate World Water Day with an assembly advocating for changes and lowering of using salt use during the winter, to keep the environment safe and drinking water clean.

The students are part of H2 of O, their goal to reduce the amount of road salt used in Orangeville. Students began the project in October, when visiting the Town’s Well 9 and after studying the sodium chloride levels, have found the sodium levels have risen by 175mg/L over the last 30 years.

“We were really surprised about the sodium levels in our water,” said one of the student organizers/leaders.

Students are also involved in a Water Documentary Action Project, which they will submit to the provincial competition, Water Docs Film Festival, were the best video is picked.

During the assembly, students showed demonstrations of how much consumable water there is in the world. They also offered alternatives to using salt, such as sand, coffee grinds, ash from a fireplace, and kitty litter. One student announced an initiative to have a 2-km walk around the school in May, to raise money to buy hippo rollers, containers that roll along the ground, with a handle attached to the axis of the barrel. The rollers will go to developing countries, to get more water easily and efficiently.

One of the student leaders said they put out a survey for parents of the school, to see how much salt is used. “Our goal is to make everyone aware of what’s happening and to lower sodium levels.”

Other student leaders noted how, since Orangeville is connected to the Nottawasaga, Grand and Credit rivers which lead to Georgian Bay, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, the sodium levels here impact a lot of people.

“We really just want to make sure that people know about this, and maybe if kids go home tonight and tell their parents, maybe their parents will tell their friends, and their friends tell their friends.”

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