By Brad Haire
University of Georgia

A little powdered Kool-Aid, a spray bottle and a tabletop model
with tiny homes, parking lots and farm fields can show in just
minutes how pollution gets into Georgia’s streams.

The tabletop model shows how surface-water runoff can affect
local waterways, said Gary Hawkins, an Extension Service
engineer with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural
and Environmental Sciences.

Blue Kool-Aid, for instance, can represent fertilizer on a farm
field or home lawn. When “rain” from the spray bottle hits the
Kool-Aid, it begins to flow. A student can easily see how that
fertilizer can eventually reach waterways and become
pollution.

Different Kool-Aid colors can show how other pollutants, such as
oil and gas from parking lots, can reach waterways, too.

“The 3D aspect of the model gives a hands-on effect,” Hawkins
said. “It gets the point across much faster than listening to a
lecture.”

It’s just one of several tools used in the “Fun with Pollution
Prevention” program developed by the UGA biological and
agricultural engineering faculty.

“A lot of pollution prevention and water-quality educational
programs are geared to adults,” Hawkins said.Over the past four years, Hawkins said, the program has been
presented as a whole or in part to around 8,000 K-12 students,
teachers and adults from Georgia and other states.

The rainfall simulator is another tool. It shows how soil
sediment gets into waterways. Sediment can cover the bottom of a
stream and choke out microorganisms and invertebrates. This can
cause a bad ripple effect throughout the stream’s food chain.

Other tools include subsurface water models and low-cost water
testing kits. Students can use the kits to test their local
water’s pH, nitrates and dissolved oxygen levels.

“The tools with this program show how individual actions can
have a positive or negative effect on waterways,” Hawkins
said.

The program is part of the UGA Agricultural Pollution Prevention
Program. It’s funded through the Pollution Prevention Assistance
Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

It focuses on nonpoint-source pollution. This pollution can’t be
attributed to a particular point, such as a pipe dumping waste
into a river.

Since the signing and implementation of the U.S. Clean Water Act
in the 1970s, many specific-point pollution sources have been
fixed.

Nonpoint-source pollution remains a problem, Hawkins said. It’s
harder to narrow down and control because it comes from so many
different places.