New education site beckons Sonoma County students to the Russian River

The Sonoma County Water Agency’s new Westside Water Education Center in Forestville was filled with the sounds of excitement and discovery Friday, as 58 Austin Creek Elementary School fifth-graders experienced the wonder of scientific exploration.

The facility’s first visitors learned to look at the Russian River in a whole new way, starting with the sprawling landscape that is its watershed down to the microscopic focus on some of the tiny critters that call it home. Another view plunges into the dark depths of a well that helps supply the region’s drinking water.

“I never thought about the river before, and how important it is,” said Maddie Graham, 10.

The $2 million riverside facility, built at Wohler and Westside roads on the grounds of an old rock quarry, offers a spacious setting that Water Agency officials say should allow them to accommodate more students in greater comfort than before.

It replaces a leaking, dilapidated double-wide modular building set amid components of the agency’s water collection and distribution system. That site, on the other side of the river, was crumbling, leaving one teacher to once fall right through the floor.

Students now are welcomed by two high-ceilinged rooms connected by a breezeway with big windows and modern features that include a lab filled with microscopes and a variety of interactive exhibits about the Russian River, which drains a nearly 1,500-square-mile watershed and acts as the main water supply for more than 670,000 North Bay residents.

Though diminished from their historical runs, several species of salmon, as well as steelhead trout, return to the river to spawn.

An adjacent redwood grove near the education center provides a shaded lunch spot and departure point for a new trail that leads down to the river and eventually will connect with a key fish screen and underwater chamber that will allow visitors to observe migrating fish. That chamber is under construction a little over a half-mile downstream.

The new facility’s size and watertight construction may be the most important features, as it permits classes to come out for a visit whether it’s clear and sunny, as it was Friday, or wet and rainy, as it’s hoped to be this winter.

“Before, if it was raining, we used to have to cancel the field trips,” said Cary Olin, who runs the Water Agency’s educational program. “Now our facility is big enough, we can move inside if it’s needed.”

That’s important, given demand for the field study program, which is so popular, especially for fifth-graders, that interested schools apply in a lottery system. More than 3,000 fifth-graders took part last year, Olin said.

“Ideally, we have 35 to 40 schools (come out each year) and will have 60 apply,” said Ryan Pedrotti, one of the program educators. “What’s great about having this building is in previous years we were bound by the weather.”

Though its primary use will be for the field study program, the new facility will be used occasionally for community meetings and teacher training, and as a gathering spot for regular public water system tours provided by the Water Agency.

Students on Friday were aware of their inaugural role at the site, though they were more interested in what Pedrotti and others had to teach them about the river and the water system that serves households throughout Sonoma County and in northern Marin County.

Christina Li, 10, said her favorite part was hiking the river trail, where the students learned about riparian plants and the place of the waterway in a larger ecosystem with wood rats and honey bees, birds and bacterial decomposers.

“It makes me want to go out into nature more,” she said.

Areed Syed, 10, used his time on the trail to play nature sleuth. “We saw some paw prints of different animals on the hike,” he said.

Students talked about the life cycle of salmon that were once abundant in the river system and about the cold, clean water they need to survive. And they learned, as well, of different measures of water quality, including turbidity, acidity and oxygen levels.

But it was water bugs and microscopes that prompted the most enthusiastic chatter, as pairs of students inspected samples of river water for aquatic invertebrates they sought to identify and sketch in journals.

The discoveries generated plenty of buzz as the kids marveled at weird water scorpions, slimy snails, fast-moving beetles and ancient-looking larvae of different types of flies. Several of the specimens, Pedrotti said, are sensitive to pollution and thus indicate the river is healthy.

Numerous students found planaria - odd-looking flatworms with close-set eyes. Quest Rhodes, 10, said he had read about the creatures.

“Did you know, you can cut it in half and it will grow into two?” he said.

Adrian Valdez, the last to leave the microscope bank after examining a caddisfly larva with “these puny little baby eyes,” said he wished he could stay and find more creatures.

“It’s really fun,” he said with a huge grin.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.