Students in Anna Burkett’s biology class worked with volunteers from the Lake Anna Civic Association to improve water quality at the Lake. Burkett (pictured at left) and 30 students worked to help build floating wetlands to help combat harmful algae blooms. Photos by Andrew Woolfolk.
On April 19, Louisa County High School (LCHS) students from Anna Burkett’s biology class teamed up with the Lake Anna Civic Association (LACA) to build floating wetlands in an effort to combat the Harmful Algae Bloom problem affecting the lake.
A former Orange County High School (OCHS) teacher, Burkett recently brought her environmentally focused education practices to Louisa.
“[At OCHS] we always did tree planting and stuff with Friends of the Rappahannock,” Burkett said. “I just moved to Louisa to teach biology and I wanted to do the same thing, but Louisa is in the York River watershed, so it’s a completely different watershed and conservation group.”
Friends of the Rappahannock hired an educator to help with the York River watershed and put Burkett on a committee dedicated to raising awareness of the watershed and Lake Anna.
“I attended this meeting and there was a gentleman on the call named Harry Looney, who is an active member in the Lake Anna Civic Association,” Burkett said. “He made a comment about an education piece, so I [said] ‘Hey, I’d be really interested in talking to you about getting my students outside.’ That’s kind of where this all came from; creating an outdoor experience with my kids that dealt with conservation and community service.”
LACA was awarded a $10,000 grant from DuPont’s Clear Into the Future program to fund the event, including student transportation. They also ordered the plants, found the location and coordinated volunteers.
“The grant request was focused on remediation activities,” Looney said. “What we’re trying to do is reduce the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen entering the lake from the watershed, whether that be from streams up in the watershed, or from lawns and farms that exist on the lake itself.”
The runoff of those chemicals goes into the water, feeds microscopic plants such as algae and causes them to bloom. When the algae die, the bacteria returns, decomposes, takes up the oxygen in the water and creates a dead zone.
“To help fight that—plants want the nitrogen, it’s a fertilizer for them—we’re trying to add more plants to the shoreline, or even in the middle of the lake,” Burkett said. “We are building a living shoreline; that’s our goal. One of the LACA members volunteered their house for us to go to, so we’re gonna have six stations for the students to participate in.”
Alongside encouraging home and business owners at the lake to purchase and cultivate plants, LACA’s grant request included an education and outreach component to make people aware of the importance of shoreline vegetation and grasses in the water.
“So people don’t yank that stuff out if it’s by their property and not causing a navigation or personal hazard,” Looney said. “That element caused us to reach out to the local high schools, and Anna Burkett responded very quickly and very positively, so we spent three or four months doing the planning with Anna and the Louisa County High School folks to make this happen.”
While Burkett’s classes included around 80 students, she opened the opportunity to the first 30 who wanted to attend.
According to Looney, the event exceeded expectations and is something LACA would like to continue doing with LCHS and other nearby high schools.
Andrew Woolfolk
“The big thing for me is getting my kids outside because Biology is an SOL class, so it’s super content heavy. We don’t have a lot of extra time to get outside and do experimental things,” Burkett said. “We do a lot of labs inside the classroom, but ecology is always our last unit and we never have a ton of time for it. We may only have a few days for [the unit], but we have a whole day of it Wednesday to talk about macroinvertebrates and water chemistry and stuff like that. We’re trying to get some ecology entwined in the regular curriculum as we go.”
Some of the stations included collecting macroinvertebrates, conducting water chemistry, planting plants along the shoreline and in the water, native plant ID and a scavenger hunt.
“We’re kind of creating a marsh between the water and the land to help absorb some nutrient runoff that may happen in the water,” Burkett said.
According to Looney, the event exceeded expectations and is something LACA would like to continue doing with LCHS and other nearby high schools.
“The kids were very engaged and asked a lot of good questions. The homeowners who sponsored us went out of their way to make the event a good learning experience and fun outdoor experience,” Looney said. “The superintendent of schools visited, the Louisa County Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, [and more]. We had really good turnout from the students, our volunteers, and the community.”
Leah Coffey is a part-time reporter. As one of The CV’s weekly contributors, Coffey originates story ideas, interviews subjects, and writes community focused articles.
