Sixty students from Auburn, Lewiston, Turner, Sabattus and Lisbon schools participated in the work.

AUBURN – With a set of three paint-smeared stencils in his left hand, Leavitt Area High School freshman Kenny Maher taunted the team on the other side of Turner Street.

“Hey guys, it’s about quality, not quantity,” Maher yelled. He and his three teammates, along with the rest of the Auburn Land Lab students, weren’t in a race to paint storm sewers Wednesday morning.

The goal of the 60 kids from Auburn, Lewiston, Turner, Sabattus and Lisbon high schools was to tattoo the pavement around storm drains with water-protection warnings.

But it was difficult not to compete, and Maher and his team had the process down to a swift science: One student dropped an orange cone to warn oncoming traffic. The next quickly swept surface dirt from the area. Another dropped and arranged the stencils, and the fourth painted the asphalt.

The result was a three-tiered message: “Protect your water” followed by the fish and then, “Don’t dump.”

Then, scooping up their supplies, they moved on up the street.

It was part of an effort to remind people that many of those drains feed directly into the Androscoggin River.

“It’s turned out to be a perfect land lab project,” said coordinator Cameron Parker. The gifted and talented math and science students began studying river pollution last fall and are now focusing on storm-sewer pollution.

“They really came up with most of this themselves,” Parker said. They’ve studied the sewer system, tested water quality and are planning a stormwater fair at 3:30 p.m. this Friday at the land lab.

The students’ efforts work well with the cities’ strategy, said engineer Kristie Rabasca. Both Lewiston and Auburn have been building distinct storm sewers for rain runoff, to meet federal guidelines. The storm sewers are designed to keep heavy rains from flooding the cities’ sanitary sewer system and accidentally flushing untreated sewage into the river.

Now federal regulations require the cities to teach residents to treat the storm drains differently, since many now lead directly to the river. That means not dumping oil or chemicals into the drains and trying to keep them clear of dirt and debris.

“We have a whole public education process planned for this summer,” Rabasca said. “We have a TV ad and four radio spots all put out by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to remind people.”

Parker said the students decided to paint reminders along the storm drains as part of their project. They picked Turner Street and Gamage Avenue because they are highly travelled, residential streets, Parker said.

“Maybe they’ll stop someone before they dump, remind them what not to do,” she said.

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