By Sudha Kamath
A group of George Mason University undergraduate students recently rolled up their sleeves to help clean the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, learning that the availability of clean water is a local problem while they picked through shards of glass and old shoes. The College of Health and Human Services students picked up trash in the fifth annual Upper Occoquan River Cleanup at the Lake Jackson Dam and the Lake Ridge Marina in Prince William County, Va. The event was hosted by the Prince William Trails and Streams Coalition.
Mason students from a College of Health and Human Services class make some surprising finds during a community river cleanup. Photo courtesy of Department of Global and Community Health.
Casandra Manor, Kellie Frizzell, Kelly Baitinger, Kara Tansill, Jed Reposer, Madison Morris, Emily Emerson, Miran Jun, Jing Li and Jennifer Villegas are students in a Department of Global and Community Health class on health and environment taught by Shannyn Snyder. They took several hours out of their weekend to help make a difference in the community.
Snyder has studied access to clean water and health care in vulnerable populations, and illness and mortality because of inadequate sanitation. This is the second year she has taken students in this class to the cleanup. “My motivation is to demonstrate that water impairment is not a third-world issue, but one that requires attention in our own backyard,” she says.
Snyder, who earned her bachelor’s degree in political science and her master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies in anthropology and global health from George Mason, believes it’s important for students to have hands-on experiences in the field.
The class noted some of the challenges of the cleanup, especially handling the thousands of shards of glass that washed up along Lake Jackson Dam shores. Manor is a junior from Fresno, Calif., majoring in community health. She expressed her concern for visitors who may not realize there is so much glass, an obvious safety hazard.
Students gingerly picked up glass with rubber-tipped gloves and dislodged plastic bags, fishing line and even clothing. They found everything from shoes, to a rake, to an animal tooth.
“This experience really surprised me because we found 41 bags of trash in three hours,” says Jing Li, a global and community health major who happens to work Lake Ridge Marina. “Most were plastic items, such as water and beverage bottles, cups, food containers and lids, gasoline bottles, plastic boards, plastic piping and plastic bags.”
The junior, originally from Shan Dong, China, says the students were surprised by the beauty of the river at a distance, and by how polluted it was up close. “(Visitors) would enjoy utilizing the Upper Occoquan for kayaking and canoeing, but after having seen so much trash up close, they probably would not swim in the water,” he explains.
“Mason students have the opportunity to participate in cleanups such as this, and it’s great to see how many of them are proactive,” says Snyder. “Many of the students enjoyed being a part of the cleanup and would like to regularly participate in this type of environmentalism in the future.”