Stream Crime Investigation

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2015

Fairfax County Stormwater Planning Division (SWPD) ecologists often use presentations to introduce students to stormwater science and other water quality monitoring programs. While presentations are useful to disperse information, they do not offer the hands-on experience that can effectively connect with students. In recognition of this problem, SWPD staff has developed a high school lab activity entitled Stream Crime Investigation (SCI) that couples the informative nature of presentations with the hands-on experience of lab exercises. The lab illustrates the connection between the residents’ behaviors on land and their impact on receiving waters. Students act as recruits for a crime prevention unit whose role is to track and stop common pollutants from entering our waterways. Students use kitchen chemistry reactions which emulate the tests conducted by real stormwater scientists to identify the sources of pollutants in a fictional town and propose solutions to prevent additional pollutants from entering the storm drainage network. Response to this lab has been overwhelmingly positive from teacher and students, alike.