Ferrum College Celebrates Franklin County’s Water Resources and World Water Day With a Week of Programming

3/13/2013

Special events include documentary and film screenings plus a river and stream clean up day.

Ferrum, Va. (March 13, 2013) – Ferrum College will celebrate Franklin County as “The Land Between the Lakes” and the College’s place as the “College Between the Lakes,” as well as World Water Day on March 22, with several special events next week including documentary and film screenings plus a river and stream clean up day. The week is part of a year of special programming based upon the theme of “Sustainability: More for Less, for All.”

“Franklin County is blessed with wonderful water resources and Ferrum College scientists have been studying local water quality since 1985. In recognition, the College expanded its celebration of World Water Day to a week of special programming on water,” said Dr. David Johnson, Ferrum College Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Science and Chair of the Theme Programming Committee.

For the first event on Tuesday, March 19, the PBS Frontline documentary Poisoned Waters will be presented at 7:00 p.m. in the College’s Garber Hall Auditorium on campus. In this documentary that includes segments on the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith examines the “slow motion, long term risks” associated with emerging water contaminants such as endocrine disrupters, which are chemical compounds that mimic the body's natural hormones. Students from two upper level classes, Environmental Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry, will host the presentation.

Next, the award-winning film Water on the Table will be screened on Thursday, March 21, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in Garber Hall Auditorium. As an ode to water and an artful, intimate portrait of international water activist Maude Barlow, the film is also a debate over whether water is a commercial good or a human right. Following the screening, Ferrum College Environmental Science program graduate Dr. Anne Rea will comment on the film from her perspective as Assistant Laboratory Director for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (E.P.A.) Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Program. At the E.P.A. lab in Research Triangle Park, Dr. Rea works within the Office of Research and Development in the National Exposure Research Laboratory. She has also served as the Assistant Laboratory Director for Ecology and received numerous awards for superior achievement and service.

“As the Assistant Director of the Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Program and as a scientist with responsibility for drinking water resources, Anne is in a position to talk authoritatively about resource availability and the feasibility of declaring that safe drinking water is a human right,” said Dr. Johnson of his former student.

Finally, on Saturday, March 23, Ferrum College Sustainability Coordinator Chekka Lash has organized a stream clean up conducted by student and community volunteers that will include Ferrum Mountain Creek, which runs through campus, and Story Creek, which runs through the Ferrum community. Stream clean up volunteers will meet at 10:00 a.m. in the picnic area below Franklin Hall on campus.

All three events are free and open to the public. For more information, please email flash@ferrum.edu or djohnson@ferrum.edu.

#    #    #

Back to News Listing