Category Archives: Tree Huggers

Hello from The Tree Huggers! Completing our research on wastewater with the Schuylkill river trail organization was such an eye opening experience for Autumn(myself), Allie, and Mallory.

We decided to focus on waste water for our research aspect because of the Schuylkill river consisting on mainly waste water. This wastewater is the brown, murky, dirty looking water. The kind that your average human would not want to swim in. Wastewater is caused by runoffs into the water containing chemicals such as nitrate and ammonia, along with other negatives such as litter and animal waste. Society has already taken steps to attempt to manage this wastewater. This is negative because it is affecting the wildlife that lives in these waters.  Some steps society has already taken are developing the Sewage Collection System and wastewater treatment facility, fish ladders being built to support shad migration in Manayunk dam, etc. Ways that we can help as individuals would be to pick up litter, recycle when you can, maintaining septic tanks, dispose of used motor oil properly, try not using pesticides for lawn care, replace old appliances with “water friendly”, such as EnergyStar or Watersense label.

Working with Kaitlyn Mills from SRT was a pleasure throughout the course of our service project. For our service project we went to different municipalities along the Schuylkill river and located different amenities these municipalities had to offer. Amenities that we found were pickleball, basketball, soccer fields, golf courses, pools, etc. We found that these amenities were very important in keeping up with cleaning around certain areas of the Schuylkill river. Having these amenities is important to keep people from the community active, but also to keep them up to date with how the Schuylkill river is making progress in cleaning up the wastewater. We also did some extra digging into areas around the river. Specifically we looked at the Hopewell watershed, which connects to streams connecting to the Schuylkill river. This watershed holds very clean water, seeing this clean water that comes from the river shows that it is possible to turn this wastewater into something more clean and efficient. Another amenity we looked at was the new SRT bridge that was built on 724. This bridge connected two of the trails to create a safer way of crossing the main road to utilize that trail.

Our takeaway from this entire experience was that it is so important to keep up with taking care of our planet. The Schuylkill River is a very large river, but just a small representation of the wastewater issues experienced around the world. We learned a lot about different ways to help the river and encourage others to take these steps to helping the Schuylkill river. Our plan from here is to keep up with the parks we live around. The members of our group: Autumn, Allie, and Mallory each live in different areas of the Schuylkill river, so with that we will be able to continue to keep up with multiple areas of the river. We thank the SRT organization for working with us and educating us on all the parks and amenities around the Schuylkill river. We also thank our professor Dr. K for being an amazing leader in teaching us about our environment and how we can help, even in the slightest ways.

Keep your water clean!!!

Thank you,

The Tree Huggers

Brochure