Special Events UpdateMountaintop to Tap Exhibition Debuts at Queens Museum of ArtFor twelve exceptional high-school students, May 15th was truly a watershed moment. It marked the opening reception of an exhibition of photographs and journal entries documenting their 3-week journey in July, 2007 that traced New York City’s drinking water — from the source in the Catskill mountains to the Central Park reservoir. The exhibition will remain on display through June 29th, when it will move to other locations in New York City and the Catskills and eventually return home to the Stroud™ Water Research Center.

These students, now the subject of a documentary film entitled Mountaintop to Tap, rowed, paddled and hiked the 200 miles across the watersheds that provide 9 million New Yorkers with some of the world's best fresh water. They were joined along the way by several Stroud scientists and educators, NYC Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP) officials and municipal authorities. During the trek the students did their own water testing using the Center’s Leaf Pack experimental test kits.

The trek was the brainchild of the Stroud Water Research Center and was inspired by a desire to bring together the upstate and downstate communities that share this watershed — underscoring their relationship to one another and their interconnectedness through the water supply. The educational program, created by the Stroud Water Research Center and funded by the Leo Model Foundation, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, NYC Department of Environmental Protection, the Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation and several generous Friends of the Stroud Water Research Center, was designed to educate students to become watershed stewards both in their own right, and in the hope that they would in turn educate others — and, they have.

Through their journals and photographs we all can enjoy the beauty of the natural resource that is the NYC watershed and understand why it should be protected. We can see what they saw, feel what they felt, and know what they now know — that many organizations are responsible for the protection of our water supply but, as individuals, we too share in that responsibility because everyone of us lives downstream.

For more information about the Stroud Water Research Center's Leaf Pack Network® and the Leaf Pack Experiments Stream Ecology Kit, please visit: http://www.stroudcenter.org/lpn/index.htm

To purchase the documentary video:
http://www.libraryvideo.com/product.asp?mod=Search&i_ACTIVE_ITM=1&i_FROM
_GRADE=1&i_TO_GRADE=20&qs=mountaintop&key=LVC&Exact=N&Words=A&
mscssid=680WQMSM4VF69PDSH0NTWG8304P72LNE&x=0&y=0&sku=W3309&
wherefrom=search


Back to Spring 2008 Upstream Newsletter

Home