It all started with a field trip.  In October 2010, fourth grade and sixth grade students from the Christa McAuliffe School, PS # 28 had the opportunity to take a tour of Jersey City’s Reservoir # 3, the “hidden jewel” of Jersey City.  Located only blocks away from the school in the Heights neighborhood of Jersey City, none of the students had ever visited the reservoir before.  Most of them didn’t even know there was a reservoir behind the imposing stone walls surrounding the site. Walking through the entrance gate was like entering a fantasy world for the students…one that previously had existed only in books, pictures, and their imaginations.

Steven Latham, president of the Jersey City Reservoir Preservation Alliance, shared the history of the reservoir with us, noting that it was built in 1874, supplied water to Jersey City for almost a century, and finally ceased operations in the 1990s.  The site fell into disrepair until nature gradually reclaimed the area.  The original Egyptian Revival walls and Romanesque pump houses still stand, as a poignant reminder of our city’s past.  The Reservoir Preservation Alliance is working diligently to protect the reservoir from development, maintain the area as a natural retreat hidden away in the middle of the city, and promote the existence of the reservoir and the need to save the reservoir’s lake, meadow, and woods from destruction and misuse.  Within minutes of arriving, the Christa McAuliffe School knew we wanted to help.

Our students were astonished at the variety of flora and fauna that could be found tucked into the nooks and crannies of the reservoir.  Upon passing a wild apple tree, many just had to try one of the tart little fruits, amazed to realize that apples really did grow on trees.  Students mapped the location of numerous species of plants, trees, and shrubs, and noted the invasiveness of plants like ailanthus.   They stood at the water’s edge, took water samples to test for microorganisms back at school, and drank in the heady sight of the New York City skyline looming beyond the towering trees.  Our students fell in love with the reservoir that day.

Back at school, students began to research the species they discovered at the reservoir.  They became our very own “in house” experts who could teach you anything you wanted to know about the plants that grew in Reservoir # 3.  As the weather grew colder, and foot upon foot of snow fell on New Jersey, our visits to the reservoir had to be put on hold.  We figured, if we can’t go to the reservoir, we’d bring the reservoir to us, and set about recreating the reservoir in the first floor hallway of our school.  Students made 3D replicas of plants, trees, shrubs and even animals and posted their research nearby.  Various teams worked to survey the rest of the school to determine if they knew about the reservoir, create a scavenger hunt game designed to test a visitor’s knowledge of the wildlife of the reservoir, and, design a website containing an interactive map of the reservoir, complete with research pod casts recorded by our students.  We hosted an “open house” in February, inviting district administration, local community leaders, and members of the Reservation Preservation Alliance to visit our winter reservoir, view our research, talk to our kids about what they had learned, and play our scavenger hunt game.  Some of our students were so familiar with the plants of the reservoir that they actually beat the score of the Alliance’s president! 

Our first year's efforts were showcased in our first annual “Community Day at the Reservoir”, (June 2011) where our students gave tours of the site and encouraged visitors to learn more about our project.  Parents, government officials, fellow students, district administration, and community members all came out to show their support.  As teachers, we assumed that the end of the school year would mean the end of the project.  Well, we underestimated these kids!  A passion had been born.  The kids wanted to do more to help revitalize, redesign, and transform the reservoir into a fully functional recreational and educational nature preserve.   They came home from Community Day COVERED with mosquito bites and quickly posed their first query- How could our school achieve its goal of making the reservoir a place to relax, learn, and enjoy if visitors would be attacked by mosquitoes?  We had our first goal...to decrease the mosquito population at the reservoir.  Little did we know that that would start us down a path that led to a project bigger and better than we ever could have imagined!

Among other things, we knew that we needed to decrease the mosquitoes at the reservoir if it was ever going to be a useful site for the community.  To begin, we had to know how many mosquitoes and potential mosquitoes were calling the reservoir home.  We headed over to the reservoir to collect water samples.  Back at school, we examined the samples under microscopes to count the mosquito larvae in our sample.  Considering it was late October, we only found three!   But what we did encounter while looking for larvae was a swarm of adult mosquitoes concentrated in a small area with standing water.    We filmed a video that day while collecting samples in a 20 square meter section of the reservoir.  We watched the video and paused it to count and estimate the number of adult mosquitoes within the swarm.  Our estimated average was 628 mosquitoes within the 5 x 4 foot section.  Based on our own observations from our trips to the site and using a Google Earth image, we estimated that the reservoir had 34 similar sized locations that would be ideal for mosquito reproduction.  As a result, we multiplied our population density of 628 mosquitoes by 34 and resulted in an estimated population density of mosquitoes within the entire reservoir at 21,352 individuals! No wonder we had some many mosquito bites last year!  Who would want to share their nature retreat with that many mosquitoes? 

After extensive research, we decided that fathead minnows would be the best all natural, sustainable mosquito control that we could introduce.  Because it was fish, and not chemicals, it would not be bad for the environment.  If we were successful in raising them and releasing them into the reservoir, they would hopefully eat the mosquito larvae in the water.  They would also hopefully reproduce on their own in the reservoir water and their population would continue to grown.  Also, the fish would be food for different birds and animals that might visit the reservoir, thereby increasing the biodiversity of the area. So we gathered some fish tanks and an old pool and set up our Aquaculture Room in the storeroom of our school's Science Lab.  Newark Museum heard about our project, and donated their old 500 gallon aquariums. Our principal offered an unused storage room in the basement as our new "Aquaculture Room #2".  We got to work setting it up properly, with the Newark Museum tanks (that we had to scrub clean!), our tanks, and special grow stations that we built under lights that could stay on for hours.  Now we were in business!  Our Reservoir Team came in early every day to tend to our minnows and chart our progress towards breeding and raising them. We kept data about our adventures in minnow breeding.  We carefully tracked when and what each tank was fed, if the water was changed, the number of fish and/or eggs present, and any general observations we had. We had many challenges.  In order to make sure we had a good ratio of males to female, we had to identify gender.  We also had to experiment with the optimal water temperature, lighting, water aeration and oxygenation, and food source.  Our initial success rate was not that great, as we only had 7 babies out of approximately 500 eggs laid.  However, we now feel that we have the best conditions for reproduction, and have a large population of active adult minnows ready to breed.  We expect that come spring, our minnow population is going to explode!

When we started aquaculturing, we assumed the fathead minnows would eat fish food.  After losing quite a number of fish, we realized that we needed a better food source...one that was similar to what the minnows would eat in the wild.  Our research led us to a microorganism called paramecium.  The only problem?  We now had to breed them too!  So our aquaculturing program expanded to include the breeding of paramecium as a food source for our fathead minnows.  This means feeding the paramecium yeast and wheat germ and twice daily sampling of the tanks and examination under microscopes to check that the population is increasing.

We are also growing cattails in our greenhouse to transplant and reintroduce at the reservoir.  Cattails were once plentiful there, but have slowly disappeared. We eagerly planted our seeds and waited...and waited and waited.  Nothing!  For our second attempt, we altered the conditions a little and experimented with different variables.  We hypothesized that the greenhouse was too cold at night, so we moved the cattails to Aquaculture Room #2 and installed grow lights that could stay on for extended time.  Out of 500 seeds, only 4 germinated.   On to round 3 of cattail propagation.  We installed a thermometer in Aquaculture Room #2 and realized that the room is just too cold for getting our seeds to sprout!  We decided to place clear plastic wrap over the remaining seeds in an attempt to raise the temperature and help them germinate. Finally...success!  Based on trial and error, hopefully we now have the correct set-up to grow cattails from seed.  After cold stratification for a few days, our seed cups will be placed in a partially water filled plastic container with two overhead full spectrum bulbs.  We will keep the containers in our science room which maintains a constant room temperature of 70 degrees.  We installed a thermometer within the containers and hope that having the lights on for 18 hours heats the seed cups to 75 degrees.  

Through research we learned that the decline and elimination of cattails at the reservoir was due to the dominating presence of invasive phragmites.  We wondered just how many phragmites might be present at the reservoir so we decided to once again conduct a population density study of the species.  We sampled a squared meter section of a wetland portion of the reservoir and counted 75 phragmites flower heads.  We used Google Earth to calculate the total length and width of the entire wetland section of the reservoir and used formulas we learned in Math class to arrive at a total area of 746.34 square meters.  We multiplied the area by our sample population density of 75 and arrived at a total population density of phragmites flower heads at 55,976!  Based on both what we've observed and a map of the reservoir, we estimated that 60% of the total area was heavily populated with phragmites.  We then calculated 60% of 55,976 and got our final estimated population density of phragmites flower heads at 33,586...and this sample population was taken during the winter!  We quickly realized that our baby cattails had no chance of surviving if we planted them in an area close to the phragmites.  We were once again faced with another challenge.  How could we protect our cattail seedlings until they were strong enough to make it on their own?  Our Social Studies class provided the inspiration for finding a solution to our planting problems.  Thank you Aztecs for your creation of the chinampa, or floating garden!   We quickly modified existing designs to create our very own "28 chinampa."  We even created two 1/8 scaled models to run buoyancy tests. The chinampas will float in the reservoir, away from the phragmites.

But we weren’t done yet with our project!  We took the Reservoir Alliance's proposed plan for the future design of the reservoir site and created a 3D architectural model of their "ideal" reservoir.  We added new features that we envisioned for the future reservoir, including a walking path, outdoor learning lab (complete with white board and microscopes), bathrooms, fishing pier, and our chinampas).  We presented our ideas to one of the Alliance members who was so impressed, he quickly made arrangements for the Alliance’s architect to meet with us to discuss our ideas, and suggested we write formal proposals detailing our ideas for submission to the full Board of the Reservoir Alliance.

While we were busy raising our minnows, we didn't lose sight of our overriding goal to transform the reservoir into a place where students from the community could learn and explore.  We put together a field trip guide for teachers to use.  The guide includes  a scavenger hunt, a lesson on water sampling, directions for filling out field trip paperwork, links to our message boards for classes to post about their experience, and a "supply box" of everything classes need for a productive day at the reservoir.  We're currently working with our teachers to upload actual lesson plans for the teachers to use when they visit.  We were able to host PS #8, a nearby school, as our "inaugural class" at the reservoir on their field trip.  Before their visit, we set up the signs for the scavenger hunt, and gave them all the supplies they would need.  They followed our lessons and had a great time while learning some important environmental concepts.  We’ve also had a class of artistically talented students go on a field trip to the site to use it as the springboard for a lesson on landscape painting.

As of this writing, we are busy raising our minnows, paramecium, and cattails.  Two chinampas are built, with more in the work.  We have started planning our second annual “Community Day at the Reservoir” to be held this June.  The project will continue into next school year also.  We have already set our goals for school year 2012-2013.  They include:

• Resample water and  look for decreased mosquito population

*  Raise and breed copepods, a mosquito eating crustacean to aid mosquito control

*  Raise and breed spring peepers, a frog once native to New Jersey that is no longer present in the reservoir.

*  Continue building, testing, and refining our floating chinampas

*  Continue developing Sketch Up (architectural program) with our improvements to the reservoir included

*   Work with Reservoir Preservation Alliance to investigate best possible option for new walkway to be installed

*  Lobby State of New Jersey to designate Reservoir #3 as a state recognized environmental learning center

*  Upgrade current single camera live feed to multi camera, multi location live streaming of aquaculture rooms & reservoir

Jersey City’s Reservoir # 3 has been called the “hidden jewel” or the “hidden oasis” of Jersey City.  Not if the students of the Christa McAuliffe School, PS # 28 have anything to do with it.  Our goal is increase awareness of this unique natural resource among the people of Jersey City, develop curriculum and activities that can be used by schools throughout the city and county for on-site field trips, and assist the Jersey City Reservoir Preservation Alliance with developing the reservoir as a haven for city residents.  We aim to revitalize, redesign and transform the site into a premier recreational and educational locale.  With this project, we’re well on our way!