Youngsters fish for clean water at creek

Six-year-old Olivia Zacharias practiced her fishing skills Thursday with a plastic fishing rod and a little toy alien as bait. After several casts into a children’s swimming pool, she got a piece of candy rather than a big fish as a prize.

The game “Kids Fish” was one of 21 activities available Thursday at Flat Branch Park as part of Stream Extravaganza, an event celebrating the cleanup of petroleum from the park. Participants had the opportunity to learn about the streams in Columbia and different ways they can keep surface water clean.

“One way to get kids involved is to get them out doing things in the stream, like fishing, because if the water quality isn’t good, there are no fish to catch,” said Lindsay Tempinson, a volunteer at the event.

Mona Menezes, coordinator of the Columbia Storm Water Outreach program, said that even the simple act of tossing a cigarette butt on the ground negatively impacts streams.

“If you throw litter on the ground or pour grease out in the street, it goes in Flat Branch Creek or other city streams,” Menezes said. “All that trash enters through street drains. It wasn’t people who brought it down to the creek, it came from the city streets and sidewalks.”

One of the ways to tell whether the stream is polluted or not is through tattletale critters. Priscilla Stotts, coordinator of the Missouri Department of Natural Resource’s Stream Team, had a booth with bugs swimming in an ice-cube tray and a chart explaining how the animals indicate water quality.

She said that if bugs that need oxygen in the water, such as dragonfly nymphs, die, it indicates that the water is polluted.

Stotts also brought a conductivity meter, which measures the minerals and salts dissolved in the water, another form of pollution. If the conductivity meter is above 1,200 micro siemens, it indicates a possibility of pollution.

Among the people who attended the event were 12 girls from the American Heritage Girls, a Scout troop in Columbia. Their leader, Katy Lipsey, said the visit was part of their community nature badge.

“If we pollute the water, there is no healthy water for us to drink and no heathy food to eat,” said eighth-grade Scout Gretel Miller.