School News

Young environmentalists at Lynbrook High School make a SPLASH

Students learn about the local ecosystem

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Lynbrook High School students visited the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant as part of a research partnership with Operation SPLASH.
Lynbrook High School students visited the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant as part of a research partnership with Operation SPLASH.
Courtesy Lynbrook Schools

Lynbrook High School AP Environmental and AP Biology classes are collaborating with an AP Environmental Class at Mineola High School to evaluate the need for an environmental improvement plan for Long Island.

This project is part of a partnership that the Lynbrook School District has formed with Operation SPLASH (Stop Polluting, Littering and Save Harbors), a volunteer organization committed to protecting local estuaries from harmful human action. The goal of the partnership is to help students develop science-engineering skills by becoming actively involved in local environmental issues.

Students began their joint project by investigating a case study of potential environmental threats to the local waters of Reynolds Channel and the Western Bay Area. They attended a lecture on local seawater ecosystems presented by SPLASH President Rob Weltner and Lynbrook alumni Mike Martino of Suez Water, the company that runs the day-to-day operations of the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant.

The presenters detailed the history of Nassau County sewage systems, including challenges the current infrastructure poses to local ecosystems. Participants later visited the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant, where Martino gave them a tour of the facility.

Armed with this information, Lynbrook students will be analyzing soil and water samples in the Bay Park waterway, while Mineola students will be testing samples from the Cedar Creek waterway. They will compare the effects of the Bay Park sewage treatment plant, which has no ocean outflow pipe versus the Cedar Creek plant, which does. Groups from each school will team up, meeting virtually to share their findings and create journal reports. One team will be selected to present their findings to a Nassau County government official.

“I was just fascinated by the sewage treatment plant because I never really thought about where our water went,” said Lynbrook High School student Brianna Lombardo. “I think that more people should be aware of how our choices impact the environment. Also learning about how the sewage plant improved once SUEZ took over was a great thing to hear because everyone who works at the plant has the same idea to help the environment.”

The highlight of her research, she said, was seeing the screening process at the sewage plant because “there are just too many wipes and garbage being flushed that makes the job for the plant workers ten times harder.

“ We need to stop this excessive waste … because it hurts the whole ecosystem. When the sewage treatment plant gets backed up and flows into the bay by accident, it damages the fish and organisms living in the bay.”

Brianna also liked coming back to her district to talk to the younger students.

“It made me very happy knowing that the second-graders in the community were learning about this because taking this class in high school was an eye-opener to my everyday lifestyle — and I would have loved to have had this information at an earlier stage.” Tasks, she said, “like not putting detergents down the drain, not flushing wipes down the drain, taking shorter showers, and polluting the air are not very difficult to change so we can make a difference in the environment and in the future.”