Golden Beavers – Trash, oil, waste food, gravel, detergents, lawn fertilizer are all things we would not think of throwing into the river or into our water supply, but every day, someone does.
You’ve seen the catchbasins and grates at the side of the streets. Where do they go?
Some of the Beavers of the 1st Golden Scouts Group have been learning that in Golden, these catchbasins connect to the storm drain system, which sends surface water runoff either directly to the Columbia or Kicking Horse River or feeds to the underground aquifer that supplies our drinking water.
Any pollutants that enter the storm drains have the potential to affect our water supply or our aquatic environment, and the Beavers have been learning all about this over the last three months since they decided to complete a community service project related to water.
What is a pollutant, you may well ask? In this case, it is anything that isn’t rainwater.
In order to mark which catchbasins feed water to the river and which feed the aquifer, they identified two common symbols for marking these drains – a fish symbol for those that drain directly to the river, and water droplets for those that drain to the drinking water supply.
Over the last week, the Beavers have been painting the raindrop symbols near the catchbasins in the southeast part of Golden to remind people that anything that goes into these storm drains could end up in our drinking water supply.
The Beavers would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of the Town of Golden, Lordco, Maple Reindeers, and the volunteers who all helped to make this project happen.
