Met Council Teaches Kids About Water

(Kids talking)

this is one of the most fun things i think i get to do with because it
lets me think like a kid act like a kid in a way
each class and that comes here, we have
i believe forty-five classrooms,
that come out today and spend the day learning about water
and it's anything from the um...
the seeing water critters or it talks about nonpoint source
so what can we do on the land and how it goes to storm sewers and into rivers
and lakes
see all the red in the system
what you just put into this well, that's going to flow through the entire ground water system and
not end up getting
pumped up along the way
are put into a lake or river
or if that's just regular water, not wastewater, it could be contaminated by one
of these leaky landfills. That's gross. You don't want that in your drinking water,
It's not good for you.
And pretty soon the Gulf of Mexico is going to overflow.
The Met Council treats the wastewater for the entire metropolitan area.
and so we have a direct
influence on the quality
of the water that is found the in the receiving water bodies of the area
in the Minnesota River
and the St. Croix River, in the mississippi river, all of which have wetlands along their shore.
so what we do how well we treat our waste water could influence the
ecology of those wetland areas along river.s
The stream work that we're doing is really important part of what the met council
is doing
all the land use decisions that we make all of the land use changes
inevitably affect the runoff and they affect the streams. We change the vegetation. We change the
impervious surfaces, the water that's getting into our streams.that's getting into our streams
All the development choices that we make affect our streams and that in turn
affects the amount of erosion, the types of sediment in the stream
the pollutants that are going
from our streams in the metropolitan region all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.
the choices we're making here
are affecting the entire globe.
It sounds extreme.
But it's all connected. (Sound of kids playing.)
Water connects us all. It's important and it's as
important to you as it is to me and to the next person
and we can all make a difference um...
improving it and keeping it for future generations because again it is the
essence of life
(Sound of kids playing.)