Forces combine for environmental education

Alex Coolman

NEWPORT BEACH -- School teacher James Martinez was running through the

details of a new district environmental education plan Thursday afternoon

when he let slip a sentence that might serve as a slogan for the entire

program.

“Watch out, fifth grade,” Martinez said. “Water quality is coming your

way.”

At the same table where Martinez sat at the kickoff lunch at the

Riverboat Restaurant were the people who were going to see his promise

come true: officials from the city of Newport Beach, the Newport-Mesa

Unified School District, the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum and the

city’s Harbor Quality Citizens Advisory Committee.

Those groups are teaming up for something called the Partnership for

Clean Water, which aims to bring a greater degree of environmental

awareness to students. A $22,000 project that has been largely funded by

private sources, it will be available for he district’s 1,600

fifth-graders in the school year ahead.

The program, which has been incubated during the past year in

Martinez’s classroom, combines resources from a number of different

agencies to give kids a 10-lesson introduction to some of the area’s most

interesting water quality issues.

At Thursday’s lunch, a diver from the environmental group Orange

County CoastKeeper plunged into the water off the Pride of Newport paddle

wheel boat. Using an underwater camera, he gave the assembled crowd a

view of the marine life -- mostly mussels and sponges -- that flourishes

on the structures beneath the restaurant.

The same experience, under the Partnership’s plan, will now be

available for fifth-graders, who will visit the paddle wheel boat on

field trips.

Students will also get to check out an environmental video, “Respect

the Beach,” prepared by the Surfrider Foundation. Additionally, water

testing, to be performed at local waterways, will be incorporated into

the curriculum.

Along the way, said Bonnie Swann, Newport-Mesa’s director of

elementary education, students will be tested for their knowledge of

environmental concepts and terminology.

What officials hope to see, Swann said, is a quantifiable improvement

in fifth-graders’ understanding of the way things like pollution and

urban runoff affect the environment.

“If anyone asks us, we can tell them, ‘Yes, we believe in the power of

this [program],’ and here is the data to show them,” she said.

The hard evidence should be useful, Swann said, because other

districts in the county are said to be looking at the Partnership’s

program as a model for developing their own environmentally oriented

units.