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Wonderful West Virginia Water

As told by Arthurdale, West Virginia, Students
Arthurdale, West Virginia

Story Narrative:

In collaboration with Arthurdale Heritage, fourth and fifth graders from West Preston School and a group of local homeschool students developed five videos that explore the history, tourism, nature, and agriculture of Arthurdale, West Virginia. Students learned to conduct oral history interviews, draft scripts, along with taping and editing a video. The students premiered their films to local residents who were impressed with their careful research and considerable digital skills! In this short film, students talk with a local water expert and a fisherman about area waterways and wildlife. 

Speaker 1 (00:03): For our project, we wanted to study water and fishing in West Virginia. We interviewed Michaela Collins from Friends of Decker Creek and Rick Satterfield, who is a local fisherman.

Speaker 2 (00:22): They talked about water, what lives in water and safety related to drinking water. And what fish that lived in our local lakes and streams.

Speaker 3 (00:37): Michaela Collins is an AmeriCorps member at Friends of Deckers Creek in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Michaela Collins (00:47): So there are a couple of ways that we keep water fresh and clean. One of them is we test it, we test it using chemical testing probes, and that tells us all kinds of things. It tells us pH, it tells us temperature, it tells us something called conductivity. Another way that we keep the water clean is we pick up trash. We literally take trash bags and gloves and trash grabbers, and we go and we pick up trash with a lot of community volunteers. So those are two of the biggest ways. All kinds of things live in water, fish, bugs, snails, clams, mollusks. And even more relies on water, I can't think of a single animal that doesn't need water to survive. Snakes? Yeah, snakes live in water sometimes.

Speaker 1 (01:40): All right, go ahead, Doug.

Michaela Collins (01:46): There is a lot of bacteria that live in water and some of them are really good. Bacteria isn't always a bad thing. In fact, I wrote it down, there was one study, I saw that it said for every glass of drinking water, there's almost 10 million good bacteria in it, yeah. But bacteria do good things, so that kind of bacteria help actually clean the water. They eat the organic stuff and the chemicals that are in it. And in streams, like where I work and in ponds, the bacteria, they decompose, if you guys know what decomposing means, they break down dead stuff. And that puts other nutrients back into the ecosystem. And sometimes there's bad bacteria, like I said about E.coli that comes from waste, from animal waste or from people waste if sewage leaks into the water. So that can happen sometimes.

Speaker 1 (02:36): After learning about the small creatures that live in water, we learned about fish and fly fishing from Rick Satterfield, a local fish fly fisherman.

Rick Satterfield (02:53): What do I enjoy most? It's just fun. It's relaxing, don't you think? You just don't really have to do anything. And it doesn't matter if you catch anything or not, you're just having fun and enjoy in nature. So I don't have to work really, so I don't have to work, plus I like to eat fish.

Speaker 1 (03:22): We learned a lot from our interviews and thought it was important to learn about the water we drink and what lives in the area. We hope you all learn something too. And thank you for watching.


Asset ID: 2022.28.03
Themes: Water, fishing, fishermen, trout, wildlife, streams, water quality, trash, community, bacteria, education, nature
Date recorded: Prior June 27, 2022
Length of recording: 03:33 m
File Type: Video
Related traveling exhibition: Crossroads: Change in Rural America | Water/Ways
Sponsor or affiliated organization: West Preston School students in collaboration with Arthurdale Heritage, Arthurdale, West Virginia
More informationhttps://www.visitmountaineercountry.com/events/smithsonian-exhibit-at-arthurdale-heritage/

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