Ella Caplea

Project: Professional Internship with Huron River Watershed Council Aquatic Field

Earlier last year, I joined the volunteer team of the Huron River Watershed Council (HRWC), an organization that improves the ecosystem of the Huron River and fosters community involvement through engaging students and citizen scientists with field work and outreach. The Huron River is the life sustaining water source of 85% of Ann Arbor’s drinking water and our monitoring helps keep this resource safe, improving health across Washtenaw county. The HRWC’s Chemistry Monitoring and Flow program perfectly aligns with my interests in chemical engineering and environmental stewardship. One day last summer, while I was at the main office cleaning field equipment, I spoke to some interns who had just gotten back from their morning on the river collecting data on zebra mussels.

As they shared their experiences working in the river, I knew I’d fit right in. I applied and was accepted to the internship over the winter. I’m thankful to spend my summer with this team. I expect to gain field work experience and to continue contributing to many of the HRWC’s several decade long data collection programs.

As the summer is progressing, I find engaging with the students during STEM education programs we’ve organized to be rewarding. Several large organizations, such as Ford Motor Co. and General Motors, invest in the Watershed Council specifically to fund educational outreach for these elementary and high school students.As interns, we have been learning about the importance of engaging community members in science related thinking early on.

Not all days are as clean as the picnic tables in the parks! Some days we get stuck in the mud during river work, some days rain alters our data collection plans, and ticks have found us during invasive species removal and aquatic plant management days. Learning adaptations and innovative ways to get the data collected has been part of my learning from our mentors, such as finding out when measurement alternatives need to be used to accommodate for large stretches of the river.

Maintaining a healthy watershed ecosystem is integral to the health of the Midwest, and HRWC has been an active force in decreasing pollution and PFAS contamination within the watershed. Although I do not directly work on coming up with solutions for the PFAS crisis, throughout several lunch and learn sessions I have had the opportunity to speak with company professionals on their work. I’ve used the resources available to the watershed council and my own skills as a Sustainability Fellow to teach and engage community members. We go door to door sharing the importance of supporting the health of our ecological community, and provide fliers on how to prevent waste from going directly into the river through the drainage system in all the neighborhoods. We have done a significant amount of invasive species removal, actively supporting the wellness spaces at Trinity Health Hospital. In developing engaging educational outreach, and by focusing on supporting others in caring for our common home, my work at the watershed council continues to mirror the goals of the JTS initiative, by improving just access to sustainable environmental resources and information.

I am the most proud of my work on rain garden construction during this internship. We worked on the entire process- we chose locations for gardens, designed garden landscapes with native plantings, did the demolition work to lay the garden foundation and completely installed full garden ecosystems. We taught the Washtenaw community about the benefits of rain gardens, presenting information on which native plants make rain gardens thrive here. The physical construction of the rain gardens was fulfilling, both community gardens spanning across our watershed and local gardens for homeowners who want to make a difference. My team and I also worked to maintain the green infrastructure across the over 1,000 documented rain gardens in our watershed. As the county drain infrastructure connects directly to the river without any filtration system, installing these environmentally friendly gardens that work to naturally filter pollutants improves the water quality in our area. This paired with the door to door communication about this direct access to the river from whatever enters our drainage system, I feel as though I have both implemented physical sustainable systems while also encouraging sustainable environmental practices.

I’ve learned how the graduate students and fellows impact the HRWC team in writing grants, establishing research, and in connecting with other community agencies in partnership to impact the health of our community. For future work I could explore the backend legal side of grant proposals to supplement my understanding of the proposal side.