A Neighborhood Scale Assessment of Industrial Sources of Stormwater Pollution

A NEIGHBORHOOD SCALE ASSESSMENT OF INDUSTRIAL SOURCES OF STORMWATER POLLUTION TO COMPTON CREEK WATERSHED 2015 Teaching Syllabus* for Jefferson High School, Los Angeles, CA

Week Topics Student Learning Objectives Activities 1  Introduction to  Understand the purpose, schedule and work  Delineate the watershed of an urban creek project required for the project based on storm drain lines (handout)  Los Angeles climate  Understand basics about Los Angeles’s  Delineate the watershed of an open space – rainfall and climate / rainfall creek based on topographic lines temperature  Know where Compton Creek is and (handout)  Compton Creek understand the problems  Use modeling clay to help envision three overview  Understand the concept of a watershed and dimensions and interpret topographic  The hydrologic delineate the area draining to a creek based maps cycle on elevation and storm drains  The water balance equation  Watersheds (+ preview of urban watersheds)  Activity: delineating watersheds

2  Review of  Be able to write out the water balance  Use urban watershed model to explore hydrologic cycle equation, define each component, and streamflow and pollutants  Urban hydrology describe how each component changes with  Watch pollution video urbanization o Impervious  In two separate teams, walk around JHS to surfaces  Be able to identify components of the urban observe aspects of drainage, impervious o Land use drainage system, such as storm drains, surfaces, infiltration in vegetated areas, changes impervious areas, concentrated flow paths, trash and other pollutants sources. Do it as o Vegetation pollutant sources (using the HS campus as an a scavenger hunt – students need to example). changes identify specific elements, take photos and o Drainage  Understand how pollutants travel in an indicate on a map. system urbanized watershed changes – storm drains, engineered Week Topics Student Learning Objectives Activities stream channels o Pollutants  Pollutants – trash, metals – where do these come from?  What happens to pollutants in urban areas with impervious surfaces and storm drains?

3  Review of urban vs.  Be able to name at least 4 differences  Short video open space between urban and open space watersheds  Run experiment created by UCLA student hydrology that affect infiltration, runoff and ET team to explore infiltration and channel  Water balance  Understand why local streams are flow for different scenarios (pervious vs. elements during a channelized impervious watershed, and vegetated vs. storm versus in  Understand how infiltration and channel un-vegetated channel). Three teams of JHS between storms characteristics affect flood risk students run each of the 4 experiment scenarios and record results. Results are  Flood control and  Hypothesize experiment results and compare averaged across the 3 teams and why so many LA to actual results Region streams are compared to hypotheses. channelized 4 Field Trip  First hand experience of Compton Creek and  Field trip –  Compton Creek the LA River, be able to identify them on a o Coordinated with Heal the Bay watershed and land map o Conduct a Streamside uses  Experience the biology of the creek Bioassessment  Compton Creek  Understand that healthy stream biota are key o Due to access limitations and channel objective for achieving clean water standards depth of channel, do the best we o How does can to capture benthic inverts it vary along its length? o How does the vegetation change?  What lives in the Week Topics Student Learning Objectives Activities creek?

5  Land use and  Understand the link between land use and  Students conduct independent online industrial facilities pollutants research on common water quality – identifying  Be able to name common pollutants that pollutants to learn their sources and pollutant sources in impact water quality, understand their impacts to the aquatic environment, how the watershed. sources and their impact there are measured, and what levels typically result in impairments  What are the  Be able to understand common units of impacts on stream measure for water quality parameters.  Students share their findings with the organisms? group.  Be able to identify various sources of metals,  What are the major especially copper and lead water pollutants  Understand the impact of metals on in-stream and impairments of biota water quality? How are they measured, what are their sources, what are their impacts on water stream organisms? o Copper o Lead o Trash o pH o nutrients o bacteria; e. coli o conductivit y o dissolved oxygen 6 Systems in place to  Know what EPA and RWQCB stand for and  Filtration demonstration -- students make keep streams clean what these agencies do their own filters (Regulations and  Understand what an impaired waterbody Permits – Part 1) refers to  Clean Water Act,  Be able to state the purpose of the Clean regulations, Water Act permits  Be able to state what a water quality objective  Stream and Week Topics Student Learning Objectives Activities stormwater is monitoring  Know what the Industrial General Permit  Water quality regulates objectives  Be able to describe the systems we have in  Impaired place to keep our streams clean and healthy waterbodies  Industrial facility inspections  Responsible agencies o Regional Water Board o City Attorney’s Office o Elected Representa tives (City, County)  Water filtration experiment 7 Discussion of copper Understand how water quality parameters affect Students research copper toxicity online and toxicity to stream biota the toxicity of copper and why. develop answers to the experimental design and the influence of questions other water quality parameters (hardness, alkalinity, pH, etc.). Information based on EPA’s Biotic Ligand Model. Week Topics Student Learning Objectives Activities 8 Continue discussion of Understand the basics of experimental design –  Fun enactment of chemical processes: one copper toxicity to dependent and independent variables, controls. student is a fish, others are cupric ions stream biota. Understand how to design an experiment to look looking to bind to fish gill. Other students at the affects of multiple independent variables. play role of Ca/Mg ions that have already bound to fish gill and others are carbonate ions that are looking to complex with the cupric ion.  Complete the design of an experiment to look at the impact of multiple water quality parameters on copper toxicity. 9 Field Trip to Hyperion Learn about links between stormwater, runoff, Field Trip Water Treatment Plan – water usage, wastewater. Benefit from the focus on the urban extensive, interactive displays at the Hyperion runoff elements of the Environmental Learning Center. Environmental Learning Center displays. 10 Review of material To review and synthesize the information Use fun game such as picking a word/phrase covered to date. presented in class to date and to recognize that it and having to draw or act it out. provides the context for next steps of research Intro to stormwater and presentations to EPA, RWQCB, etc. Have each student write a paragraph about permit system what the watershed problems are and how we might address them. Read in front of the class.

11 Overview of Understand that there is a permit system for Sign into Google and use MyMaps to create a stormwater permits. industrial facilities, similar to a driver’s license. custom map and to search for facilities based (Regulations and Understand that there are steps that can be taken on keywords. Import the watershed boundary Permits Part 2) at facilities to prevent pollutants from entering layer and the land use layer that highlights stormwater runoff (like covering piles of scrap industrial use. Create a new layer to import Brief intro to mapping. metal). Recognize the concept of a Standardized facilities found using the keyword search. Industrial Classification (SIC) Code. Start of research into industrial facilities in Learn how to use Google MyMaps. watershed that might be contributing metals loads to stormwater. Brainstorm keywords related to metals and use MyMaps to search and store as map layer. Week Topics Student Learning Objectives Activities 12 Presentation on Civic Learn how to take action in the community for Group work to identify root causes of Action Projects by environmental improvement problems and identify civic actions that can be Gregorio Medina from used to address these causes (under guidance the Constitutional Learn how to search using imagery. of CFR guest speaker). Rights Foundation.

Continue with research of industrial facilities using MyMaps. Search using Google Earth imagery.

13 Continue with research Learn how to present data in a report, create Continue with identifying metals-related sites of industrial facilities graphs, discuss findings. using Google maps, and doo Google search for using MyMaps. Search corresponding SIC codes. for SIC codes for each facility and compare to IGP list of covered SIC codes. Prep final list of facilities to review on field trip. 14 Field trip to assess Understand the connection between on-line Take photos and make notes on field forms. status of a subset of findings and on-the-ground observations. identified metals- related sites in the neighborhood of JHS. 15 Review findings from Process information and observations from the Upload field notes and analyze overall results. field trip and upload field, and understand research protocols for field field notes onto shared data management. project site

16 Write letters to Learn to logically organize ideas and information. Write letters agencies and facility Learn to make a case for change and action. owners.

17 Finalize letters, plan Learn to logically organize ideas and information. Write letters, make video video and record Learn to make a case for change and action. interviews for video. Week Topics Student Learning Objectives Activities 18 Wednesday: review and Gain experience speaking to an elected official, Students take public transportation with prepare for learn about the City Council activities, and visit teacher to City Hall, meet rest of the team from presentation City Hall. UCLA and Waterkeeper.

Friday: Presentation to LA City Councilmember for District 9.

Notes:  Project meetings were held after class on Wednesdays from 3-5pm at Jefferson High (1319 East 41st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90011)  A total of 18 weekly meetings: January 21st through May 27th, 2015  One week off for JHS Spring Break during week of March 30th

Supporting documents including PowerPoint presentations, handouts and student exercises, are available for download from the UCLA project website at: http://www.environment.ucla.edu/urban-waters/

*This implemented curriculum reflects a combination of our ideal teaching program and the real-world issues encountered related to student attendance, availability of internet connectivity, and other challenges. For more information, please contact Felicia Federico at [email protected].