FOREST ACRES, S.C. — There's contaminated water flowing through a Richland County neighborhood, according to educators at Cutler Jewish Day School (CJDS).
On Thursday, students from the school marched down streets in Forest Acres raising awareness about high bacteria levels from human waste in a creek near the school.
“I was really sad because I had made lots of my memories here in that creek,” 11-year-old Max Mollohan explained.
“Yeah, same here,” 10-year-old Layla Parrish added. “That was a part of our summer, spring-ish time. Like that was what we did.”
The 4th and 5th grader described their reaction when they found out the creek next to their school is contaminated.
“We discovered that there's three strains of E. coli in our creek: one is from canine which is kind of expected in a residential area. We have dog poop and it runs off,” Valerie Hoyt-Parris, a math and science teacher at CJDS, shared. “One is still kind of mystery and that was chicken. So not quite sure how that got in there. But the largest amount of E. coli was from human wastewater, which was surprising and totally disgusting.”
Hoyt-Parrish also runs the outdoor education program at the school, which she has been developing as a “passion project.”
“And over the years, I’ve been here 17 years, we've been able to put two outdoor classrooms out there, a boardwalk, seven raised beds,” Hoyt-Parrish explained. “We used to have a greenhouse and it's become an integral part of CJDS. It's part of our curriculum. We teach out there and we use it for playground.”
Using it in an educational environment has a “laundry list of benefits,” Hoyt-Parrish says.
“It is good for not only the mental and emotional well-being of children, it's important they're getting hands-on learning out there. You're creating stewards of the environment,” she elaborated. “It calms a lot of times. So there's so many different ways to use it and not to mention gross motor skills when they're out there running and developing those fine motor skills and they're just playing with the small little tiny twigs and stuff.”
Part of that outdoor education involves testing macro invertebrates in the water. Last school year, Hoyt-Parrish says that test revealed high levels of E. coli in the invertebrates they caught.
When Hoyt-Parrish found out the water her students learn in was contaminated, she reached out to Gills Creek Watershed Association Executive Director Bailey Parker for help.
“It could be a busted sewage line. Or it could be a leaky septic tank. The challenge is we don't know exactly where septic tanks occur,” Parker shared. “There is no publicly available map that has all the remaining privately owned septic tanks. So what we did as Gills Creek was reached out to East Richland Public Service District (ERPSD) who runs the sewage line out here and asked them if the homes in these addresses were on their sewage line. And it turns out they all are, so we're curious now whether or not it is actually a leaky septic tank and maybe it could be a leak in the sewage system.”
It’s information that Hoyt-Parrish says is necessary.
“[Parker] can tell us that the water comes in clean here, comes out dirty here, but we want to narrow it down even more so we can identify this is where it's coming from so we can fix it,” Hoyt-Parrish added.
On Thursday, students marched through the streets of Forest Acres waving signs to solicit help from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) and ERPSD, while raising awareness about the contamination to neighbors living in the area like Bill Draffin.
“I'm surprised because I had no idea. My daughter is a little bit…I mean she doesn't love mud and dirt but you know she does like animals so every time we walk by the creek she likes so it kind of like interact with the turtles and frogs or like the snakes, whatever is in there. So definitely concerning to hear that there was some waste,” Draffin explained. “I'm fully in support, right? I'd like our waterways to be clean for the sake of wildlife, our children to play in them.”
It’s a sentiment Hoyt-Parrish says she and her students are trying to encourage in the area.
“I hope that the residents in Forest Acres and in the community, they see the children, they hear their voices, they see how important this creek is to them, as well as to themselves,” Hoyt-Parrish said. “This water is running through your neighborhoods. It's going into a golf course, it's going down into a lake, it goes to Gill's Creek. And it's not until we all come together and ask these agencies to do something is anything going to happen. We need permission to go test in your area. If you can, reach out to Bailey Parker at Gills Creek Watershed. Let her know, ‘Come test. Let me know that my portion of the creek is clean.”
Parker says that’s a good first step.
“E. coli in water anywhere is not a good situation. But specifically here, if I'm going to test further and further narrow down where the source is, I need to get into people's backyards. And they don't know me, they don't know what I'm doing,” Parker detailed. “But after this they might have a little more awareness of what's going on and welcome someone, me or someone else, to come and test in their backyard to really determine where the source is so we can work together and fix it.”
But while Parker says she can help with testing, it’s going to take a partnership between different agencies.
“We are going to need help from DHEC and East Richland to fix this problem. The Gills Creek Watershed Association can't do it by ourselves. The school can't do it by themselves. It's not on our property. So we're going to need agencies to help out.”
Parker says seeing students advocate for that partnership has been “encouraging.”
“Because that means that any work that we do is going to be continued,” Parker expanded. “Not only is it better to have more people doing the work, but the children are involved. They care, they know they have a right to go into this creek, and that's the next generation. So everything that we're doing now that we are is going to be continued and worked and expanded upon by these children. It's so powerful.”
Mollohan and Parrish say they’re excited to continue advocating for change alongside other students.
“I was thinking because I have a little sister and if the creek never gets fixed, she won’t even be able to play in it,” Parrish shared. “So when I heard [it could be fixed], I was like ‘Yay! My sister is going to be able to get the same experience I did.”
When it comes to potential negative impact on humans in the area, Parker says issues from E. coli contamination can cause pink eye and gastrointestinal illnesses or infections. The consequences aren’t only harmful to humans, though.
“We saw a decline in wildlife over the last year. So we used to have minnows and frogs, tadpoles, turtles, you name it in the woods and in the water, even crayfish and they were slowly disappearing,” Hoyt-Parrish said. “If you have that amount of E. coli in the water, it's harmful not only to humans but to the wildlife. So if you take out the lower part of the food chain, then the upper part of the food chain is missing out. So now we no longer have our raccoons and foxes and owls either so everything is changing.”
News19 reached out to both agencies for more information. ERPSD Executive Director Joey Jaco says his agency got a call from DHEC last June about the contamination, and has been investigating since. Jaco says his team has performed spoke testing and various inspections to find out where the contamination might be coming from.
At this point, Jaco says ERPSD has not found a specific location, which he says likely indicates that the contamination is not coming from the sewer system or storm drainage system in a direct line managed by his agency. Instead, he says this contamination might be coming from some sort of overflow or from a reconnection during construction that was not registered with ERPSD.
While Jaco says ERPSD has not found any connection between its lines and the contamination, he says inspectors have been going out to perform routine tests. Additionally, Jaco says he's been a part of continued conversation with DHEC to try and find a solution.
As of Thursday evening, we have not heard back from DHEC.