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Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Katey Zimmerman, and Sierra Stickney, Sound Rivers’ stormwater education coordinator and Resilience Corps NC AmeriCorps member, were on campus this week, sharing the word about water quality with East Carolina University students.

The outdoor event was held at the Greenville campus on Wednesday and featured organizations whose work fulfills one of 17 listed sustainable development goals — Sound Rivers falls into goal No. 6: clean water and sanitation, according to Katey.

“We were on the lawn behind the student center, and they had a bunch of tables set up, all of which were related to sustainability,” Katey said. “It was a good setup, because students walking back and forth from classes were stopping by the tables, and a lot of people expressed interest in our work and in volunteering.”

The two also hosted a Greens Mill Run creek walk later in the day, introducing participants to Sound Rivers’ trash trap on the Tar River tributary, as well as sediment pollution and erosion. Along the way, the creek offered up several water-quality-related topics for discussion.

“We came across some rusty, orange stuff in the water, which looked bad, but it’s really just an iron-oxidizing bacteria, and an oily film that also looked suspect, but was organic,” Katey said. “The way you can tell the difference with oily films like that is if you break it up, organic material will stay separated; synthetic material will come back together again.”

Greens Mill Run is also a great fossil-hunting location, and the creek walkers took home shark-teeth souvenirs.

“It was a great interaction with ECU students, sharing information about Sound Rivers, then splashing around in the Greens Mill Run,” Sierra said.

Resilience Corps NC AmeriCorps is a service program of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina, funded by a grant through the North Carolina Governor’s Commission on Volunteerism.

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