2,000 Students Team Up in Project to Test Rio Grande

More than 2,000 students from Colorado to Mexico took the pulse of the Rio Grande on Wednesday.

They dipped bottles into the river, fired up camp stoves to cook samples, put on surgical gloves and pulled out chemistry sets to test for sediments, alkalinity, bacteria and other indicators of the river’s health.

The tests, part of the Project del Rio, will provide a snapshot of Rio Grande water quality at 65 testing sites along a 1,900-mile stretch of the river, from the mountains of Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico.

“We wouldn’t have known half as much about the bosque if we hadn’t done this,” said Jon Hey, 15, a 10th-grader at Albuquerque’s Bosque Preparatory School, named after the forested area along the river banks. The Rio Grande “would have been just some river we drive over.”

Karl Heilman, 16, who donned waders, was instructed by Bosque Preparatory science teacher Debra Loftin on how to collect the water samples.

“It’s pretty cold,” Heilman said between river trips.

Over the last 10 years, students have found high levels of nitrates that helped water officials discover a leaky well head and even sewage from a recreational vehicle that was dumped into the river.

Project Director Lisa LaRocque said most of the $200,000 dedicated to the program is spent on training teachers in scientific testing methods. The data from the project are provided to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a similar agency in Mexico, the Comision Nacional de Limites y Agua, she said.

LaRocque said the program also uses science to give students insight into how weather, cities, agriculture and other actions can change water quality.

For instance, LaRocque said, Juarez, Mexico, doesn’t have a waste water treatment plant, and gets slightly more than 10% of the river flow, she said. In times of drought, Juarez farmers use sewage water to irrigate nonedible crops and crops used to feed livestock, she said.

“What is Juarez supposed to do?” LaRocque asked. “Do they give up farming and give up that section of their economy or do they make do with the sewage water . . . and do the best they can?”

The students can detect traces left by cities that treat sewage and put it back into the river as well as agricultural runoff that can include fecal coliform bacteria and chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides.

“They watch to see where water quality changes and then discuss why,” LaRocque said. “Although we try to be real rigorous, it isn’t data that is to be used for regulatory purposes.”

LaRocque says that she hopes the students gain an appreciation for all the factors that go into the fight over water in the arid Southwest so they can make educated choices about water use when they are adults.

Loftin, who teaches the 10th-grade integrated sciences class at Bosque Preparatory, agreed.

“I hope that they’ll take a real interest in what each individual person is doing that affects the river and the water quality,” Loftin said. “It’s fun and it’s very important.”