JAY – Livermore eighth-grader Dustin Pearson wrote down his location as leader Nate Sylvester read it from a hand-held global positioning system.

Pearson was part of a group of Livermore Falls Middle School eighth-graders and Jay High School Environthon Team members conducting a survey Thursday on the graveled road leading to Parker Pond in East Jay.

While Livermore Falls science teacher Rick Hoddinott worked with this group, Jay science teacher Rob Taylor and Livermore Falls Water District Superintendent Doug Burdo donned life jackets and traveled across the pond to document conditions around the other side. The pond is a secondary fresh water supply for Jay and Livermore Falls.

Representatives from Maine Rural Water Association and Maine Department of Environmental Protection educated the groups as they went along.

Broken culverts

Pearson and his peers stopped at a mud spot on the road adjacent to standing water in a marshy, area on the east side. A big frog rested in some brush nearby.

As the group checked out the area, Hoddinott and Jessie Mae MacDougall, a state environment specialist, spotted a crushed, broken culvert on the west side of the road.

Pearson marked the sheet on his clipboard accordingly, also documenting slight surface erosion and the standing water as Nate Sylvester of the Kennebec County Soil and Water Conservation District looked on.

A few steps farther and students found a broken culvert on the east side of the road.

Before going into the field, the groups heard 60 minutes of technical talks from specialists about topics such as: non-point pollution, road construction, soil erosion, phosphorus and water quality.

On Thursday, Taylor’s Environthon Team will compete in Rumford. In the near future, Hoddinott plans to conduct water surveys with his students and monitor the water at Moose Hill Pond, the primary water source for the two towns.

Taylor’s students have conducted water studies on Parker Pond, also known as Parkhurst Pond and Mirror Lake for several years. The results of the volunteer monitoring program have been published since 1997.

According to the 2003 water quality summary, there is a potential for a nuisance of alga blooms on Parker Pond. Some areas showed high dissolved oxygen depletion.

In addition to monitoring the pond and its surroundings, Taylor’s students raise brook trout in a tank at school and planned to put 130 of the 1-inch fry into the pond.

The information the two groups collected will be used by the state to work with landowners to make improvements to the areas.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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