Addressing drinking water contamination in two states

Engaging students in collecting water samples and making change in their communities

Naturally-occurring drinking water contaminants like arsenic pose serious long-term health risks, yet many communities lack affordable and accessible testing opportunities. Together with researchers, educators, and students, I coordinated a citizen science project around well water testing and data analysis, building it into middle and high school curricula in Maine and New Hampshire. The thousands of free samples collected helped community members learn about their drinking water quality and take steps to improve the quality of their drinking water. The project also improved data literacy and sparked community-driven advocacy efforts to increase access to safe drinking water.

primary role

project coordinator

time frame

2016-2021

skills

project management, stakeholder engagement, organization, accessible communications, data management and reporting

Selected Outcomes

Students collected 3,070 drinking water samples.
The data more than doubled the amount of information available to public health agencies about well water quality in multiple municipalities across Maine and New Hampshire.
Pilot surveys revealed some participants had started to mitigate their exposure to As and other toxic metals in response to test results from the project.
Students testified in the Maine State Legislature, helping pass a bill providing one-time grants to eligible owners of single-family homes or landlords with private well water that show evidence of contamination (LD1891, HP 1401 An Act to Continue Supporting Safe Drinking Water for Maine Families).
The project is ongoing and has expanded significantly!

Challenges and Solutions

1

Making the project understandable to a wide range of stakeholders.

Design a series of infographics to explain the purpose of the project to stakeholders with varying levels of technical expertise.

2

Collecting high quality samples and data from citizen scientists.

Co-create a clear and rigorous sampling protocol and data repository to ensure accurate data and reliable results.

3

Translating data into community actions.

Provide training, resources, and tools to teachers for empowering students to make change in their communities.

Explaining the “why”

Showing why testing wells for contaminants is important and what problem the project solves.

The project brought together a wide range of stakeholders: students, teachers, and parents, researchers, nonprofits, community groups, policymakers, and government agencies. Each stakeholder had different priorities and levels of technical expertise around drinking water contamination. To communicate the project goals to these stakeholder groups, I designed infographics that translated the project’s purpose and workflow into a clear narrative. These visuals helped stakeholders understand why the project mattered.

1 A rigorous and accessible sampling protocol

Maintaining high data quality, gaining consent from guardians, ensuring data privacy while keeping the data publicly available, and providing clear results back to families.

Designing a sampling protocol that worked for citizen scientists of all ages required an iterative, user-centered approach. We co-created and piloted the protocol locally to identify friction points before unrolling the data and sample collection process out to teachers and students. Key considerations included translating the data collection requirements into accessible steps and providing parallel online and on paper metadata collection options. while meeting consent and data-privacy needs. Through testing and refinement, we addressed the pain points that emerged in labeling containers, completing metadata, and ensuring sample traceability so participants could collect high-quality data that could be used in state and federal-level reporting. In addition to the sampling protocol, it was very important that we provide clear, actionable reports to families explaining their results and outlining what they could do if their drinking water exceeded any of the safe levels.

Top: Information about the project and instructions on collecting samples and checking sample results were printed and sent home with each student. To keep track of their sample number, samplers were provided with a magnet that had their sample number on it.

Left: Instructional video on how to properly collect a sample.

2 From Data to Action

In addition to sampling well water, we developed tools to help turn the data collected into action. In practice, this involved:

Developing science-based curricula that visualized the effects of drinking water contamination on organisms like duckweed.
Connecting teachers and students with community non-profits or advocacy organizations focused on improving community health.
Designing a toolkit for samplers to reach out to politicians.
Providing a framework for students and teachers to plan and host a meeting, forum, or other event in their community where they shared out results and resources.

A one-week DataLit workshop with teachers and academic researchers prepared teachers for implementing the project in their classroom.

Toolkit on the All About Arsenic website guiding students through the above actions.

3 Related Publications

A Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding the Public Health Impact of a School-Based Citizen Science Program to Reduce Arsenic in Private Well Water

Environmental Health Perspectives · Aug 21, 2024

Defining drinking water metal contaminant mixture risk by coupling zebrafish behavioral analysis with citizen science

Scientific Reports · Aug 27, 2021

Adaptations to a Secondary School-Based Citizen Science Project to Engage Students in Monitoring Well Water for Arsenic during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Journal of STEM Outreach · Jul 1, 2021

Development of Privacy Features on Anecdata.org, a Free Citizen Science Platform for Collecting Datasets for Climate Change and Related Projects

Frontiers in Climate · Apr 30, 2021