Kidston Elementary Grade 6/7 students are left with a bitter-sweet feeling after immersing themselves in a community-based environmental initiative with Keep Kal Lake Blue.
Keep Kal Lake Blue is a local non-profit organization on a mission to raise awareness and educate about our local freshwater sources.
Recently, Keep Kal Lake Blue teamed up with the Regional District of North Okanagan’s Jennifer Miles to bring awareness to the local watershed, including the water cycle, Kalamalka Lake and Duteau Creek as local water sources, and the problems with people using storm drains as their dumping grounds.
“The experiential component to understanding our fresh water source in Kalamalka Lake, for this group of keen stewards, was a Coldstream Creek clean,” said Brad Swanson, with Keep Kal Lake Blue.
The students gained knowledge and understood the value in our currently spawning lake salmon and made sure to stay back from the banks and respect their life cycle process as they were cleaning.
“When asked to give an adjective to describe how they felt after cleaning so much garbage, recyclables, piping, dog-poo bags (lots, and pretty sure not a lot of those were thrown in the bushes by teenagers), the bright learners had a spectrum of emotions as they felt really good for what they have done, yet felt utterly disgusted the way our freshwater is treated,” said Swanson.
“Mr. Ward’s Grade 6/7 Kidston students will be crushing it as ambassadors and stewards to keep Kal Lake blue.”
