Voices

Alice Wilson: An artist kayaking to clean our water

Meet Alice. She is a Milwaukee-based performance artist who you may—or may not:)—have noticed as a living statue in and around street festivals and other fun events not only across our City of Festivals but also around the world. Pandemic-related shutdowns cut off a major source of her income in 2020 and turned her livelihood upside-down, but Alice did not despair. Instead, she bootstrapped herself by using her newfound free time to do something outdoors that she enjoys, while also helping to clean our waterways and support her fellow out-of-work artists.

Anna Ostermeier: Switching From Single-Use Plastic Helps Our Water

Meet Anna. A job in water drew her from Madison to Milwaukee. Anna is an Americorps member serving as the nonprofit Milwaukee Riverkeeper’s sustainability coordinator. In that role she organizes the Plastic Free MKE coalition, where she coordinates volunteers and conducts public education in order to reduce single-use plastic consumption in the Milwaukee area. Single-use plastic includes things like packaging, water bottles, take-out containers—anything designed for us to discard after just one use.

Single-use plastic is wasteful from a resource perspective because we use these products only once yet they may last for a thousand years. The petrochemical industry saturates our society with plastics, converting fossil fuels extracted from the planet’s crust into a sheen of synthetic materials resistant to degradation and reintegration by biochemical processes. That leaves plastic wastes building up everywhere, and our lakes and rivers are reservoirs that collect the pollution with harmful consequences for life and health.

The Plastic Free MKE coalition brings together nonprofits, public entities, and motivated community members to change the norms around single-use plastic.

Learn more at plasticfreemke.org.

Jeff Houghton: Exploring the Underwater Realm

Meet Jeff. As a boy he fished with his father and scuba-dived with his twin brother in the lakes of northern Wisconsin. Jeff became scuba-certified at age 13 and always wanted to find a career that would involve exploring underwater—inspired by Discovery Channel videos that revealed an amazing universe of life below the waves. At the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences as a research specialist in the lab of Dr. John Janssen, Jeff has found a role that enables him to use his passion and ingenuity to explore beneath the waters of our Great Lakes. Supported by a grant from the Fund for Lake Michigan, Jeff is surveying four Lake Michigan harbor areas to produce both data-intensive and public-facing maps highlighting fish habitat hotspots. This research is revealing fish in forgotten backwaters and setting the stage for efforts to improve habitats in ways that also support our coastal communities.

Liz Ulrich: Investigating Harbor Habitats

Meet Liz. She’s an undergraduate student doing summer research with Dr. John Janssen at the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. Liz gets to kayak to fish “habitat hotels” that the nonprofit Harbor District, Inc. has installed along the steel sheet pile in Milwaukee’s Inner Harbor. She then uses an underwater camera to survey these innovative contraptions—built of old fish fry baskets and designed to provide a safe space for young fish to hang out. She finds that some plants have died but others are doing well, which informs how Harbor District, Inc. will re-plant them for long-term success in a harsh environment with a lot of wave action against the vertical walls. She’s also captured video of adult and baby bass. Inspired by the movie Fly Away Home, Liz has a passion for nature photography and one day hopes to work for the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wis. Liz became fascinated by the aquatic world after some classes taught by Dr. John Janssen, and is learning to appreciate how the aquatic and terrestrial food webs depend on each other.

Graceanne Tarsa: Studying Invasive Species Impacts

Meet Graceanne. She studies invasive species in Lake Michigan in Dr. Harvey Bootsma’s lab at the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. Graceanne gets to scuba dive, using a paint scraper to scrape mussels from the lake bottom, and herding fish called round gobies into nets so she can collect them and analyze what they’re eating to learn how the Lake Michigan food web is changing. Many of us never see—let alone think about—what lives beneath the waters of our Great Lake, but Graceanne sees firsthand. She is one of many master’s-degree students at SFS—as the unique institution is known to its graduate students—and hopes her education will lead to a career where she gets to engage the public about aquatic science.

Katie Schulz: On the Pulse of PFAS Research

Meet Katie. She grew up in Milwaukee and knew she wanted a future in science. As a master’s student at the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, Katie spent her first year reviewing research on a group of synthetic compounds known collectively as PFAS. You may have heard of them in the news. PFAS are known as “emerging contaminants” because although they’ve been around for some time, they are “emerging” in the sense that scientists, industry, and government are finding that they have unintended effects on life when they get into our environment. Katie is supporting Dr. Klaper and others working to find out more about PFAS and how to avoid the worst health impacts.

Jill McClary-Gutierrez: Combining Microbiology and Water Health

Meet Jill. For the past two-plus years at SFS, she’s worked not only with Dr. McLellan but also with Dr. Ryan Newton and Dr. Val Klump on a interdisciplinary project to pinpoint the sources and timing of different contamination pulsing through our waterways after heavy rains. Jill gains from all three scientists’ perspectives—Newton’s expertise on microbial genomics, Klump’s expertise on sediment chemistry, and McLellan’s expertise on tracking novel gut bacterial indicators—to alert the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and other local regulatory entities with detailed data on how rural and urban areas contribute distinct pollution to our waters when it storms.

Emily Koster: Putting Together the Plume Puzzle Pieces

Meet Emily. A Milwaukee native, Emily is a graduate student in Dr. Sandra McLellan’s lab at the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences helping to put together the puzzle pieces of evidence that inform when we should close our beaches to protect the public from exposure to pathogens in the water. Ever since she was a little girl playing in and around Wisconsin’s lakes, Emily was interested in protecting this precious natural resource. From Dr. McLellan and other researchers who underscore that interdisciplinary collaboration is the norm at SFS—including Dr. Ryan Newton and Dr. Hector Bravo—Emily has learned what it means to work in a lab, how to communicate scientific knowledge to audiences with different perspectives, and more about microbiology than she ever imagined. Emily is looking ahead to applying what she’s learned to a career that bridges science and policy.

Kyle Poplar: Researching Health from Aquaculture to Zebrafish

Meet Kyle. He participated in the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences’ Applied Urban Aquaculture Certificate program, and then worked for one year in Dr. Michael Carvan’s research lab examining zebrafish embryos exposed to a battery of 42 chemicals in a high-throughput screening ultimately in the service of human health. In July 2020, Kyle started his new job at a Milwaukee-area wastewater technology firm, Saukville-based Aquarius Technologies.

Becky Curtis: Researching Aquatic Toxicology of Nanomaterials

Meet Becky. She’s conducting doctoral research on how nanomaterials impact aquatic organisms at the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences in the lab of Dr. Rebecca Klaper. Becky went back to school after a long track record working in sustainability, including for the City of Milwaukee to support its recycling programs. But she chased her life’s dream to do research in aquatic science. “It really is a dream come true,” she says.

Dr. Dong-Fang Deng: Researching Aquaculture Nutrition

Meet Dong-Fang. She’s a nutritionist researching better fish feeds to support the aquaculture industry and conservation efforts. Dong-Fang works with students ranging from high school interns to international postgraduates. Her dynamic team learns from one another as they tend to many species of fish—including yellow perch, rainbow trout, Atlantic salmon, tilapia, and even lake sturgeon—in the School of Freshwater Sciences’ extensive aquaculture lab.

In Milwaukee, Dong-Fang is pushing at the frontiers of the global aquaculture industry as a whole.

As the human population continues to grow and global fisheries face further stress, aquaculture is expected to become an increasingly significant part of humankind’s portfolio of food strategies. Fish are nutritious and—relative to other animal protein sources like cattle or pork—require less feed to produce the same amount of product. But there’s a catch. Most fish feed comes from wild-caught fish. In order to raise fish sustainably, alternate protein sources for fish feed are therefore in high demand.

Dong-Fang notes that much research has been done exploring soybeans and corn as a “next generation” fish food, but the drawback to relying on those crops is they require a lot of land, energy, and water. Dong-Fang and her lab are interested in exploring other fish meal alternatives, including algae, duckweed, food waste, or even insect protein. Dong-Fang’s current research in 2020-2021, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, explores alfalfa leaf protein. If this strategy proves viable, she notes it would help both the aquaculture and agriculture industries by dramatically expanding the market for alfalfa crop.

She finds her work motivating. “If you feel that your work can help out society, can help out the industry,” she says, “you have the passion.”

Dr. Val Klump: A Freshwater Oceanographer Inspired to Save Our Lakes

Meet Val. Inspired by Jacques Cousteau as a boy, Val knew he early he wanted to be an oceanographer. Today Val serves as dean and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. As a biogeochemist—or “a mud scientist” as he jokes—Val, his fellow researchers, and crew of the research vessel Neeskay have years of experience studying Green Bay’s “dead zones” and addressing other big-picture questions about the Great Lakes that are critical to our understanding of how to protect and restore them. Val has already achieved one dream: he feels privileged to be a freshwater oceanographer.

Natalia Hernandez: Connecting Local Residents to Our Public Harbor

Meet Natalia. Natalia is outreach specialist for Harbor District, Inc., a nonprofit headquartered in the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences building and which functions in concert with the local Business Improvement District, BID 51. Harbor District, Inc.’s vision is “a vibrant waterfront community where diverse businesses, people and ecologies thrive together.”

Natalia is proud that the keystone public amenity projects Harbor District has helmed into existence were driven by local resident feedback through the Water & Land Use Plan. “One of the aspects, when talking to neighbors, was that they wanted more green space in the city,” Natalia recalls. “If you look at a map, the inner city has less green space than a suburban city or suburban areas of Milwaukee County. That was one thing we thought we can do that right away. There was a plot of land just outside our offices that we were looking at all the time, and it’s kind of like, well, what can we do with that? Maybe that’s a possibility to make something happen. So, we got to work!”

Majo Thurman: Minding Rockwell’s Environmental Sustainability

Meet Majo. She’s director of environment, health & safety for Rockwell Automation, a global corporation headquartered right in Milwaukee. She started as an environmental engineer for the Milwaukee location in 1990, and she has served as director for over 15 years. Majo and her team are focused on providing a safe place to work for Rockwell’s thousands of employees and maintaining compliance with occupational safety and environmental rules and regulations. Increasingly this has included practices related to environmental sustainability. You may not know it from walking along the street beneath the historic Allen-Bradley clocktower, but in 2010 Rockwell installed a green roof on top of the eighth floor of the building to the west of S. 2nd Street. Supported by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) and motivated by doing their part to improve Milwaukee’s water quality, Rockwell’s green roof slows and absorbs stormwater that can otherwise contribute to sewer overflows during heavy rains that threaten to overwhelm the system. At 49,000 square feet and designed to capture a million gallons of stormwater per year, Majo says this symbol of sustainability is the largest single-level green roof in the state of Wisconsin.

Gary Ballesteros: Being a Good Corporate Water Neighbor

Meet Gary. A vice president at Rockwell Automation, Gary also serves on the board of directors at Harbor District, Inc. and has taught as an adjunct professor at the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. Rockwell was an early adopter of what is now The Water Council. When it was first created, Gary served as Rockwell’s representative. “We viewed that as a very sensible alliance between academics and government and industry coming together all centered here in Milwaukee to help us create a water hub of expertise and a center of excellence for water quality,” Gary says. Rockwell itself serves industrial customers in the global water sector. “One of the beauties of Rockwell products is that we can sell them to a wide variety of customers,” he says. “They are used to control industrial processes. So we sell our products from customers as varied as Disney World or Broadway shows to mechanize the movement of amusements. And, in a similar vein, they can be used for oil & gas or automotive plants. You name it.” Rockwell has built up expertise in water and wastewater systems. “We have developed a core team of engineers who are knowledgeable about the industry of water how to clean it, how to desalinize it—if you are using saltwater—how to measure it for pressure, quality, quantity, etc.”

Wilniesha Smith: Mentoring the Next Generation in Green Infrastructure Jobs

Meet Wilniesha. She’s administrative coordinator for the nonprofit Reflo, headquartered just down the road from E. Greenfield Avenue in Walker’s Point inside the Arts @ Large Community Center on S. 5th Street. After earning a degree in environmental health water quality technology from Milwaukee Area Technical College and three summers interning with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, Wilniesha joined Reflo in 2017.

Green infrastructure—nature-inspired systems like rain gardens, bioswales, or cisterns that capture, hold, and manage water where it falls—is at the heart of Wilniesha’s career. Her work is all about water, though we see the impact in the urban landscape and in the experiences of youth she mentors.

With Reflo, Wilniesha supports projects ranging from designing and building green infrastructure at schoolyard redevelopments to guiding high school interns who gain hands-on experience with skills and trades tied to green infrastructure career pathways.

“When you open someone’s eyes up to the different careers, the different aspects, why do we need green infrastructure. And they’re like, oh yeah, I didn’t think of it that way—Seeing the lightbulb go on when you’re talking to people,” Wilniesha reflects, “is like the best part for me.”

Erick Shambarger: Making Milwaukee “Water Centric”

Meet Erick. Erick Shambarger is the environmental sustainability director for the City of Milwaukee and leads its Environmental Collaboration Office (ECO). “Being a water-centric city is really central to the identity of Milwaukee,” Erick says. “We are a coastal city. We are a freshwater city. Because of our proximity to Lake Michigan we want to do as much as we can not only to build a global brand for Milwaukee around water, but also to make real improvements to the water quality and to our way of life.”

Erick earned a degree in social philosophy and writing from Marquette University and then a master's degree in public affairs and public policy from UW-Madison with an emphasis on energy policy. After graduation Erick started his career in the city budget office where he helped Mayor Tom Barrett write his original green team report. Then he helped to grow the department he now leads. He describes a lifelong interest in the environment and was inspired by innovative water and green infrastructure practices advanced by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, which has articulated an ambitious goal to capture 740 million gallons of stormwater with green infrastructure by 2035.

While aspirational goals can help motivate change, it takes a lot of detailed work to actually make change happen within institutions. Erick helped adapt city processes to promote green infrastructure across many different city departments.

“Green infrastructure has [now] become a standard practice in city construction projects,” he says with pride. “We have a comprehensive green infrastructure plan that requires green infrastructure on large developments and our streets. We’ve got a great partnership with Milwaukee Public Schools and the Green Schools Consortium of Milwaukee to take out pavement on schoolyards and replace it with green infrastructure. So, a lot that’s going on.”

Sadhna Morato-Lindvall: Sharing Rockwell Automation’s Story

Meet Sadhna. A spokesperson for Rockwell Automation, she explains that the company’s purpose is “to connect the imagination of people with the potential of technology.” The company’s promise is to “expand human possibility,” and Rockwell does this by providing technical and automation control solutions to a variety of industries across the planet.

Originally founded in 1903 as the Allen-Bradley Corporation, today Rockwell counts over 23,500 employees spanning over a hundred countries. But the headquarters for this global firm (46% of sales are international) remains right here in Milwaukee’s clocktower building in Walker’s Point and the Harbor District.

Many people may wonder just who and what are inside Rockwell’s historic clocktower building. “Inside, our building is filled with innovators, problem solvers, builders, and makers,” Sadhna says. “They all have a passion for technology and innovation and believe our world can work better.” Today, the iconic clocktower building is mostly an office building, though there is still a high-tech, light industrial assembly line dubbed the Milwaukee Line, where Rockwell leverages some of the most advanced tools in automation to create products and showcase use for clients.

Milwaukeeans may be surprised to discover that Rockwell technology is hidden in plain sight behind some cherished local landmarks. Sadhna explains that Rockwell technology and tools power the “wings” of the Santiago Calatrava Brise Soleil of the Milwaukee Art Museum, move the movable roof panels at Milwaukee’s Major League Baseball stadium, and even control the temperature of the ice rink at the Pettit National Ice Center.

Dr. Ryan Newton: Discovering New Microbial Communities

Meet Ryan. Dr. Ryan Newton at the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences has the exciting privilege of exploring life at the microbial frontier. His lab is discovering new communities of microorganisms that live in our sewer pipes and our Great Lakes aided by technologies that weren’t even invented yet when Ryan was in grade school.

Just as the invention of the telescope allowed astronomers to observe and catalog distant stars and galaxies—leading to a fundamental shift in our understanding of our place in the universe—recent advances in genomic sequencing and microscopy have opened up a new realm of discovery, allowing scientists like Ryan to learn totally new knowledge about freshwater microbes that no one has before. “It’s a great time to be a microbiologist and exploring life on this planet,” he says. Ryan’s work has helped reveal a major surprise about the microbes inhabiting urban sewer systems—with global implications.

Dr. James Price: Researching the Economics of Water

Meet James. He’s an assistant professor and environmental economist at the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. What does economics have to do with water science, you might ask? Actually, a lot.

“Economics as a discipline does recognize that environmental natural resources have tremendous value,” James says. “It's just that these things are not oftentimes accounted for in policy decisions. Some of the work that I'm doing is to try to fill in those gaps in order to improve those decisions and outcomes.”

One of those gaps involves how we value the quality of groundwater in Wisconsin. James specializes in nonmarket valuation, a field of economics that assigns quantitative values to environmental goods and services—like water quality—that are not directly traded on markets. His current research covers all groundwater drinking water plants in the state, which are responsible for serving 42% of Wisconsin’s population with clean water. James is exploring the relationships between the quality of source water and the cost of treating that water. “Once we have that information, drinking water treatment plants can use it to look at the tradeoffs between, say, treating drinking water in plant versus protecting source water prior to entering [the system].”

Steve Servais: Designing and building with environment in mind

Meet Steve. Steve Servais designs and builds custom homes through his business, Common Advantage. He designs with the environment in mind, considering how a structure relates with energy inputs and outputs—especially free energy from Earth’s Sun. “I do a lot of my own design work,” he says. “I try to build about one custom house per year. But my philosophy with green building is that you definitely want to sail your house and not just hook it up to a more efficient outboard motor.”

In winter 2020-’21, Steve teamed with artist Sarah Gail Luther to explore the Harbor District as part of WaterMarks. He brought his environmental history and design perspectives to bear as a witness to what the pair termed the “heart of Milwaukee’s infrastructure.” “As someone who’s lived in Milwaukee nearly all of my life, I think of the Harbor District as more of an idea than a place—at least I did. It was invisible to me, both in my mental map of the city, but also it’s not a place that I would go, or I think a lot of people go…” Steve says. “But it’s a place that is undergoing a new revolution in terms of bringing people back, bringing institutions back. Such as Komatsu and also the School of Freshwater Sciences. A lot has come from conservation efforts with both the land and the water. I think having a cleaner environment is a huge part of that.”

Karen Dettmer: Her Job Is Delivering Clean Drinking Water

Meet Karen. Karen Dettmer is superintendent of Milwaukee Water Works, the publicly owned utility responsible for delivering clean drinking water to over 860,000 customers in and beyond the City of Milwaukee.

Karen earned her undergraduate degree in architectural engineering and her graduate degree in environmental engineering, both from Milwaukee School of Engineering. A self-described “Jill-of-All-Trades,” Karen learned and worked in multiple facets of engineering and development in both the public and private sector before heading up the Water Works in 2019.

She’s taken a client-focused perspective to her role as a public servant. “As a consultant, you have clients, and you're working for the best interests of your clients…” Karen reflects. “…it’s very, very easy for me to work for the citizens of Milwaukee, see them as my clients, and work hard for those individuals—work hard for those citizens.”

Karen credits the over 300 Milwaukee Water Works employees as the system’s often unsung heroes. “The passion and the pride that I have seen in every level of staff at Milwaukee Water Works is just exceptional,” she says. “The pride that we all have in delivering clean drinking water, the source of life, to 860,000 customers is just apparent in every level of staff.”

Jim Wasley: A passion for designing urban waterscapes

Meet Jim Wasley, a professor of architecture at UW-Milwaukee who describes himself as an ecological designer. He is one of three artists or designers who will engage the public along E. Greenfield Avenue.

For more than a decade, Jim has studied and promoted green stormwater infrastructure across Milwaukee from the UWM main campus to the Harbor District. His urban design work has spanned scales from individual buildings to whole neighborhoods. His current work zooms out even further to the citywide scale, considering post-industrial redevelopment opportunities that integrate water across multiple Great Lakes port cities including Buffalo, Cleveland, and Toronto.

Jim considers cities as tapestries whose design benefits from a balance of elements—including nature-inspired green space and smart water management—at multiple scales.

“It’s more about the city as a whole, and the desire to re-weave ecological processes into the city, to make rivers healthy. The idea of rivers being fishable and swimmable—which was articulated in the 1970s and [is] still a kind of dream we're marching toward and still haven't achieved in cities like Milwaukee...”

Sarah Gail Luther

Meet Sarah, one of the artists who will engage the public along E. Greenfield Avenue for WaterMarks.

A sense of urban exploration and discovery characterizes Sarah's approach to public art projects. Her practice considers the pattern of human movement in our city, drawing our attention to boundaries that divide us and unappreciated spaces whose value can be revealed if we slow down enough to see it. Though she delights in the role of an artist to share such precious moments, she is very conscious of her white privilege in framing those experiences.

"I have this ability to be a part of the city and to go to any neighborhood. What do I do with that ability that helps more people have that sense of empowerment or that sense of ownership over public places and understanding where they live and exploring and observing and being a part of the city--trying to connect with the city that they live in?"

Pancho Casarez: Food, Fellowship, & Fishing from Walker’s Point

Meet Pancho. Musician. Gardener. Gourmand. Husband. Father. Neighbor.

Longtime Walker’s Point resident and anchor to Milwaukee’s Santana tribute band Abraxes, Pancho Casarez has called the neighborhood home since he was a young child, growing up near 3rd and National and now proud owner of his family’s home near 4th and Mineral.

He’s witnessed the neighborhood evolve from the 1960s. Pancho remembers his dad would volunteer Pancho and his siblings to do odd jobs for an older generation of Polish and Serbian neighbors, including “older ladies with bigger houses.” “They always gave us food,” Pancho recalls. “My dad, my family would never ever take any money. They would always pay us with some kind of dish. I learned about soda bread. Cabbage rolls. Corned beef. We didn’t have that kind of food. We were eating basically traditional Mexican food. It was something very new to us. We enjoyed it. The community coming together.”

Pancho has always loved good food—and he is mindful that clean water creates it. During summer, his Facebook profile teems with photos of fresh vegetables plucked from his Walker’s Point yard garden—sumptuous melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, leafy greens, and more. Later in summer, the photos include delicious-looking grilled meats and Mexican dishes garnished, topped, or stuffed with the vegetables. The secret is out about Pancho’s yard garden. Friends, family, and neighbors have descended for “Build Your Own Salsa” parties to share in the bounty.

Danitra Jones: Sharing the Value of Green Tech Station

Meet Danitra. Danitra Jones is one of three community organizers with Northwest Side Community Development Corporation (NWSCDC), the nonprofit organization that spearheaded the creation of Green Tech Station.

With support of Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), City of Milwaukee Redevelopment Authority, the nonprofit Reflo, and other partners, NWSCDC is proud of the opportunity Green Tech Station represents for the surrounding neighborhoods.

She credits NWSCDC’s Planning & Community Development Manager Sarah Bregant with carrying out the vision to make Green Tech Station a welcoming reality on what was previously a contaminated no-man’s land abandoned by industry. The new community gathering and educational space uses green infrastructure to show what kind of transformation is possible when dedicated partners come together, even in the harshest urban landscape.

“One thing I’m hopeful for is the continuation of building up our community on the north side, but with positive things that actually will improve individuals’ quality of life. But then involve the community in it. Not just put things here,” Danitra says. “But actually sit down with the residents and say, hey, what would you need to improve the quality of life? So that you can feel comfortable in your community and that you can feel you are being a part of something, not just someone putting something in your area.”

Green Tech Station provides a quality gathering space the community was hungry for, according to NWSCDC. “This is a perfect opportunity for residents and different organizations to come about and teach the community what their organization is and how you connect people to resources,” she says.

At the same time the novel research and demonstration site showcases Milwaukee’s leadership in green infrastructure technologies that are improving quality of life to neighborhoods throughout the city. Bioswales and cisterns like those on display at Green Tech Station help manage stormwater at schoolyards and other sites across Milwaukee, for example, and vacant parcels replanted as urban farms or community gardens are served by rainwater harvesting. Native plants in residential rain gardens and street trees and porous pavers in public right-of-ways look better than naked asphalt, but also soak up stormwater. All together, green infrastructure features add up to help reduce flood risk and protect Lake Michigan. Visitors can get a better sense of how those features work together to make a difference at Green Tech Station.

To arrange a site tour. organize a community meeting, or schedule a field trip of Green Tech Station, contact NWSCDC.

Camille Nitsch: A Lab Chemist Engineering Stormwater Solutions

Meet Camille. Camille Nitsch is a student at Marquette University specializing in environmental engineering.

She and fellow Marquette student Joe Branca visit Green Tech Station as a field site for an ongoing experiment considering how the media in bioswales can be optimized to remove dissolved phosphorus and nitrogen from urban stormwater. This work is important because excess nutrients, which runs off the land from various sources including lawn fertilizer, can contribute to harmful algal blooms or other ecologically harmful effects in receiving waters. For us in Milwaukee, managing nutrients like phosphorus ultimately means a healthier Lake Michigan.

Marquette has built an array of “mesocosms” in sealed white plastic barrels containing mixtures of soil, sand, and compost—plus special amendments that retain moisture to increase microbial nitrogen update and coal slag to react with dissolved phosphorus. These barrels are housed at Green Tech Station next to the test plaza, where they are exposed to controlled amounts of “synthetic stormwater.” The barrels have sampling devices attached that allow the Marquette team to measure how well different mixtures perform.

The object of the experiment is to quantify the performance of the various mesocosms in order to inform the best designs for larger-scale systems like urban bioswales or other green infrastructure.

If a certain mixture is best at capturing and removing phosphorus from stormwater, for example, this would be good to know for engineers designing systems to meet water-quality goals like those in agreements known as TMDLs (water nerd jargon for total maximum daily loads). There is a TMDL for the Milwaukee River Basin that sets a limit for total phosphorus in the water. We know bioswales should help manage nutrient pollution, but Marquette’s research is important because it promises to quantify how a specific combination of factors makes a measurable difference with a contaminant of concern. The knowledge gained can help define different tools in the portfolio of strategies to meet water quality goals under the TMDL.

Camille works mainly in the lab. She prepares the synthetic stormwater applied to the mesocosms by mixing tap water with a solution of potassium chloride. She also studies the water chemistry of control systems smaller than the mesocosms so the Marquette team has an idea of what to expect in the field.

Camille attended an engineering magnet high school and is a highly motivated undergraduate passionate about doing scientific work. Helping to make a difference one environment at a time is the kind of work she wants to pursue. “I'm driven because there are not a lot of women in STEM,” she says. “I wanted to show that anything is possible.”

Joe Branca: Researching Bioretention Devices to Improve Water Quality

Meet Joe. Joe Branca is a student at Marquette University studying environmental engineering.

He and fellow Marquette student Camille Nitsche visit Green Tech Station as a field site for an ongoing experiment considering how the media in bioswales can be optimized to remove dissolved phosphorus and nitrogen from urban stormwater. This work is important because excess nutrients, which runs off the land from various sources including lawn fertilizer, can contribute to harmful algal blooms or other ecologically harmful effects in receiving waters. For us in Milwaukee, managing nutrients like phosphorus ultimately means a healthier Lake Michigan.

Marquette has built an array of “mesocosms” in sealed white plastic barrels containing mixtures of soil, sand, and compost—plus special amendments that retain moisture to increase microbial nitrogen update and coal slag to react with dissolved phosphorus. These barrels are housed at Green Tech Station next to the test plaza, where they are exposed to controlled amounts of “synthetic stormwater.” The barrels have sampling devices attached that allow the Marquette team to measure how well different mixtures perform.

The object of the experiment is to quantify the performance of the various mesocosms in order to inform the best designs for larger-scale systems like urban bioswales or other green infrastructure.

If a certain mixture is best at capturing and removing phosphorus from stormwater, for example, this would be good to know for engineers designing systems to meet water-quality goals like those in agreements known as TMDLs (water nerd jargon for total maximum daily loads). There is a TMDL for the Milwaukee River Basin that sets a limit for total phosphorus in the water. We know bioswales should help manage nutrient pollution, but Marquette’s research is important because it promises to quantify how a specific combination of factors makes a measurable difference with a contaminant of concern. The knowledge gained can help define different tools in the portfolio of strategies to meet water quality goals under the TMDL.

Joe has found the collaborative research at Green Tech Station inspiring and exciting. “I was thinking about doing urban planning or environmental engineering for my master’s,” Joe says. “This has further made me interested in this work and makes me want to create sites similar to this in the future and work with green infrastructure.”

Ashanti Weeks: ArtWorks Educating Neighbors Through Murals & Art

Meet Ashanti. Ashanti Weeks is a sophomore at Bryant & Stratton College pursuing her bachelor’s in business and human resources with an ambition to open her own restaurant.

A longtime resident of Milwaukee’s Garden Homes neighborhood, Ashanti has been involved with the nonprofit ArtWorks for Milwaukee for four years. She started as a high school intern and in 2021 served as a lead artist assistant. Ashanti supported the high school interns painting water-themed benches at Green Tech Station as well as the bottlecap mural containing 12,000 plastic bottlecaps (In addition to spelling out the site’s name in multiple colors, the bottlecaps are collaged to show the flowing of Lincoln Creek into the Milwaukee River and Lake Michigan).

Ashanti also co-led a virtual walking tour of the Garden Home neighborhood in 2021. She described various murals ArtWorks has installed in Garden Homes that show both the storied and troubled past of the neighborhood as well as aspirations by youth for its future.

She’s learned that art can be connected to anything and this fact used to make positive community change. “Art is you. It’s your way of speaking—expressing how you feel and what changes you would like to make in the world. [To a young person] I would say, Voice your opinion through art. Get involved. Live for your community. If you want something to change, you gotta make the change.”

Chris Pack: Crew Chief at the Front Lines of Climate Change

Meet Chris. Chris Pack has worked with Cream City Conservation Corps (also known as “C4”) since March 2021 as a crew leader running a pilot program that trains new workers in green infrastructure maintenance.

Supported by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), the workforce program is called Fresh Coast, Fresh Start. Funded for three years into 2024, it’s designed for adult “opportunity candidates,” described by MMSD as “including reentering citizens, unemployed, underemployed, and career-changing adults.” Pack and his crew work at Milwaukee County Parks and other sites—including Green Tech Station—to go in and maintain green infrastructure features. This involves significant outdoor manual labor, the ability to identify and remove invasive plant species, and working knowledge of how different green infrastructure features are designed to function so they can be remedied if there’s a problem.

The skills and experience involved are intended to grow the workforce of skilled laborers among racial and demographic groups underrepresented in this kind of work—important to build a more inclusive economy and a more equitable society in a truly “water-centric city.” That’s in addition to the critical importance of properly maintaining green infrastructure itself, which is important to slow the flow of urban stormwater in the face of the more extreme storms experienced and expected with climate change.

“A lot of what we do is invasives removal from these features to keep them functioning properly,” Chris says. “They're learning a lot about stormwater management throughout this process with the end result of hopefully getting some job skills and getting them hired on with some Milwaukee County Parks and some expertise that might be missing within the parks system for managing the green infrastructure features.”

Dontae Luttrell: Reflo Internship Introduced Him to Green Infrastructure

Meet Dontae. Dontae Luttrell is a senior at North Division High School who worked as an environmental intern for the nonprofit Reflo in support of Green Tech Station.

His math and art teachers recommended Dontae for the internship. Dontae says in the interview with the team, they liked his spirit. On his first day, he didn’t know what to expect but it ended up being two hours of shoveling gravel to uncover the corner of the Green Tech Station underground cistern. There was something puzzling going on with the cistern’s water level, and the engineers needed the interns to dig it up in order to investigate.

While manual labor is a big part of being a Reflo high school intern, it’s not the only aspect. Dontae also helped lead public tours of Green Tech Station during Doors Open Milwaukee, served as an ambassador for the green schoolyard redevelopment at North Division High School, helped weed and pick up trash at various green infrastructure sites that Reflo supports throughout Milwaukee, and helped table at public outreach events. As one of two North Division student ambassadors, Dontae also served as a key voice interviewed at a press conference where he conducted tours of the refurbished grounds. (He actually helped build another underground cistern at his school. It’s beneath a porous pavement promenade that collects water from the school’s tennis courts.)

Through his work at Green Tech Station, Dontae learned what a bioswale was. He learned how green infrastructure helps keep water from overwhelming the sewer system. But most of all Dontae credits his internship with opening doors for pursuing what he wants out of life. He worked closely with Reflo’s Justin Hegarty, Wilniesha Smith, and Kareem Benson-White during different phases of the internship. He says he appreciates their mentorship. “Now, I think I look at it at a different perspective,” he reflects. “Everything is not going to be given to you. You gotta go get it. Reflo has given me the chance to go get what I want.”

After graduation, Dontae hopes to attend MATC and study music production and wants to save up to attend the LA Film School. For now, you might hear him mixing his own beats and producing his own music from his Chromebook.

Find Dontae (handle: FSO Tae) on Sound Cloud or YouTube. FSO, he says, is short for “Fun Size Only.”

Kayla Hooper: Connecting Us to Our Five Great Lakes

Meet Kayla. Kayla Hooper, who attends Pius XI High School, is an artist who painted several benches at Green Tech Station for her internship with ArtWorks for Milwaukee.

For her bench design, she created swirling cloud-like forms of white on a background of pale blue. Look closely, though, and you may notice that hidden among those watery forms are the shapes of the five Laurentian Great Lakes. You may remember them from schoolwork by the mnemonic “HOMES”—standing for Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. Collectively, the Great Lakes contain about 20% of Earth’s surface freshwater.

Kayla hid her Great Lakes in plain sight in order to support the educational mission of Green Tech Station. She hopes visiting students will spy the familiar shapes and recognize where they belong on maps. Kayla also hopes this increases young people’s connection to the nearest Great Lake—Lake Michigan. After all, Milwaukee exists right on its coast!

“The most interesting thing I learned [about Lake Michigan] is just how big it is,” Kayla says. “I knew it was big. I didn't know it was one of the bigger Lakes… Of course, Lake Superior is bigger.”

She hopes people show they care for themselves and the world by not putting trash into the Lakes and working to clean them up.

Kayla says her favorite part of her ArtWorks internship was painting the benches. She got done with her own so quickly that she also helped others finish theirs. Each was rendered in a completely different style Kayla emulated to serve each artist’s vision.

Pointing to a comic-like bright pink-and-green design featuring grapefruit-like lily pads on the seat and the eyes of a watchful frog on the back, Kayla says, “This is the one I feel most proudest about helping with because I think I made it to what it could fully be.”

She also helped lead artist Jenni Reinke complete her darker bench depicting a scene from a water well and a seemingly Seuss-inspired blue bench featuring tiny cartoon fish.

Emily Thao: Young Artist Raising Awareness About Water Pollution

Meet Emily. Emily Thao, a student at Hmong American Peace Academy, is an artist who designed and pained one of the benches at Green Tech Station.

Inspired by cleanups of nearby Lincoln Creek where the ArtWorks interns pulled plastic trash and other debris from our local waterways, Emily painted the theme of pollution on her bench.

At first, she thought to paint a beach with blue water, but then decided her bench could help tell a story about the process of pollution—on the left of her bench, the scene is clear with blue and green, but on the right the water color is murky where cans and bottles mar the scene.

Emily, whose native tongue is Hmong, was also impressed with a bench painted by another ArtWorks artist. On that bench, the word for water is depicted in several different languages, including Hmong: dej.

Nazareth Casillas-Reyes: Sounding the Alarm on Ocean Acidification

Meet Nazareth. Nazareth Casillas-Reyes, a student at Escuela Verde High School, loves art and the environment. She is an artist who designed and painted one of the benches at Green Tech Station.

Her design is inspired by coral reefs—a beautiful vibrant design that belies the sad reality that ocean acidification is destroying reefs around the world. The oceans naturally absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, but over the past two hundred years human activities have added so much carbon dioxide that the water is becoming more acidic. This contributes to damaging coral reefs, which Nazareth learned are actually living structures that also provide unique habitat for fish and other creatures.

Just 17 years old, in between working three summer jobs Nazareth says she enjoyed being her ArtWorks for Milwaukee project at Green Tech Station. “It was just really relaxing to come and paint. It was really soothing. With everyone together, it made me feel really good.”

Even though reefs grow in saltwater oceans and not our freshwater Great Lakes, Nazareth appreciates the interconnectedness of all life on Earth. Nazareth hopes her bench design inspires people to think about the bigger connections between human behavior and the planet. “I just really love doing art and painting and things like that,” Nazareth says. “And also I’m really into environmentalism—just taking care of our planet, because it's the only one we have.”

Wilniesha Smith: A Guide To Understanding the Value of Green Spaces

Meet Niesha. Wilniesha Smith coordinates the environmental intern program for the Milwaukee nonprofit Reflo as well as supporting community engagement around various placemaking projects involving green infrastructure.

Niesha supports different aspects of three transformative green infrastructure projects in the 30th Street Corridor: Benjamin Franklin’s schoolyard redevelopment, the creation of Melvina Park, and Green Tech Station. In summer 2021 she shared her expertise by co-leading a (virtual) WaterMarks walk with artist Brad Anthony Bernard and ArtWorks for Milwaukee intern Will Plautz.

“Ben Franklin is a schoolyard redevelopment. So, reimagining their play space. Introducing more green space. Because the thing that's kind of evident as you look at Ben Franklin there isn't a ton of green space. They're in the middle of a neighborhood,” Niesha says. “It's kind of tight. All the houses are really close together. So, having access to a green space that's play space as well that's also imagined as a play space is needed for Ben Franklin.”

From doing historical research Niesha learned there has actually been a school on the site of Ben Franklin going all the way back to shortly after it was farmland. The Franklin Heights neighborhood was predominantly German before the 1960s, she also learned.

Just a few blocks west downhill from Ben Franklin and across 27th Street is Melvina Park, a city-owned property being upgraded with green infrastructure and play features. When A.O. Smith’s industrial campus sprawled west of Hopkins, the site was used as a parking lot. Now there is an effort to calm traffic on 27th Street and Hopkins to enhance the safety, appearance, and function of this public space along the edge of Franklin Heights opposite the Century City business park.

Just a few blocks north of Melvina Park across Capitol Drive is Green Tech Station, an education destination demonstrating different kinds of green infrastructure. Niesha envisions teachers and students from Ben Franklin walking on field trips to both Melvina Park and Green Tech Station.

She sees all three spaces reinforcing their value to the local neighborhoods, students, and people moving through the Corridor. “All are within walking distance of each other,” Niesha says. “They can be a turning point for the city to point out all of those and say this is how you can imagine your space in the neighborhood.”

Pam Ritger: Clean Wisconsin Dedicated to Helping Reduce Flood Risk

Meet Pam. Pam Ritger is Milwaukee program director and staff attorney with Clean Wisconsin, a statewide environmental organization that installs rain barrels and rain gardens across Milwaukee’s northwest side in neighborhoods hit especially hard by flooding after intense storms in 2010.

“A lot of our work here in Milwaukee, especially on the northwest side, has been around promoting green stormwater infrastructure as a way to complement other flood mitigation efforts and build communities that are more resilient to climate change,” she says.

Pam used to work in immigration law, but the urgency of climate change captured her attention. (In Milwaukee, climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms, which can cause flooding and degrade water quality when stormwater overwhelms heavily paved urban areas.) In grad and law school at UW-Madison, Pam focused on energy and the environment before returning to serve her hometown Milwaukee where she raises three young daughters. For the past eight years, Pam has put her knowledge to work planning, promoting, and supporting green stormwater infrastructure—in ways that also ensure it equitably benefits underserved Milwaukeeans.

Since 2014, Clean Wisconsin has worked with Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) to help install residents install hundreds of rain barrels and rain gardens across Milwaukee’s northwest side. Although each manages just a small amount of rain, cumulatively all these practices make a difference—capable of intercepting over 40,000 gallons of water.

“That's what's exciting about green infrastructure work in general. Everybody can play a part in it. I think that's what excites communities,” Pam says. “Everybody can have a rain barrel, a rain garden, on their property. They can talk with their neighbors about it. They can better improve their understanding of how these practices can improve water quality for our rivers, for Lake Michigan and really actively be a part of that.”

Rain barrels also provide residents with water for gardens, and the native plants in rain gardens both soak up water and beautify neighborhoods—destressing both people and native pollinators. “The pollinators really love having the milkweed and the Black-Eyed Susan, all of those important native plants that in a lot places that are wiped off the landscape but our pollinators need.”

Through her work on the northwest side, Pam has witnessed dramatic change over the past decade as people unite around what green infrastructure can mean not just for managing water but also restoring communities—providing work, pride, and purpose for young people.

“I really love how our younger generations—Millennials, Gen Z—they really are stepping up,” Pam says. “They want to become part of the solution. They know that they can. They know that they have a voice and that they can be part of the solutions and their community around them.”

Green Tech Station is a rallying point that helps focus attention on the many examples of green infrastructure distributed throughout Milwaukee’s northwest side beyond even residential rain barrels and rain gardens. Nearby, the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works has installed “green alleys” where water infiltrates through porous pavers instead of rushing straight to sewers. In the surrounding area, MMSD has built two large vegetated stormwater basins (and is planning a third) to manage excess stormwater during heavy rains to reduce the risk of flooding in a heavily paved area that historically was home to streams and wetlands. Milwaukee Public Schools have installed cisterns and bioswales at schoolyards including North Division High School in 2021, with Ben Franklin in 2022.

Lauren Lepold-Schiro: Nurturing Youth With Compassion for Nature

Meet Laruen. Lauren Lepold-Schiro teaches special needs children at Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Milwaukee Public School. Her school is undergoing a green schoolyard transformation, adding green infrastructure like bioswales, rain gardens, and native plants that help absorb stormwater and provide a safe and vital outdoor space to learn and play.

A passionate—and compassionate—teacher in her seventh year in 2021, Lauren is excited about learning how to maintain the new green spaces at her school by visiting Green Tech Station, where bioswales teem with native plants like Black Eyed Susans. Green Tech Station contains several kinds of green infrastructure.

“I’m excited to turn our sea of concrete into a beautiful space for kids to learn and play,” Lauren says.

A “bioswale” is a fancy word for a ditch with plants in it—designed at a subtle pitch so that water drains into and flows through it. Along the way, plants’ roots take up some of that water and filter out contaminants. There are twin bioswales at Green Tech Station, each accepting the same volume of stormwater flowing from the adjacent street. Water that flows through the bioswale media enters a perforated pipe running underneath the length of each bioswale that conveys the water to a cistern underneath the Green Infrastructure Test Plaza. Here the water is stored before slow release into the sewer system—or can be pumped via solar power to irrigate plants elsewhere on the site.

Learn more about how the Green Tech Station bioswales serve this unique demonstration site here.

Will Plautz: Young Leader Educating High Schoolers Through ArtWorks

Meet Will. Will Plautz has worked as lead artist assistant with ArtWorks for Milwaukee for two years through the ArtsECO program at UW-Milwaukee, where he is studying visual art (painting and drawing) and exploring his interest in community art.

Through ArtWorks, Will worked under the direction of lead artist Jenni Reinke with high school interns to paint water-themed benches and create an ambitious bottlecap mural for Green Tech Station. Through co-leading a WaterMarks walk (virtual) through Franklin Heights, Will also teamed with artist Brad Anthony Bernard to conceptualize a sidewalk stenciling project for a walking path between Ben Franklin School and Melvina Park.

“One thing I really learned about though this project is I learned a lot about A.O. Smith, and the closure of A.O. Smith, which—I didn't even know A.O. Smith existed. And I just learned a lot about how generations of people just kind of were denied stable work after the closure of the factory.”

Learning about the industrial history of the 30th Street Corridor informed Will’s designs for the walk icons. In addition to single-color stencil art featuring native pollinators and native flowers, he also sketched welding guns, oil cans, and a glass water heater to hark back to how industry provided family-supporting jobs that moved away when A.O. Smith and other industries relocated from the corridor.

These stencil icons are intended as “breadcrumbs” that add a sense of playful connection to place. The icons are intended to help draw attention to and create conversation around native plants, native pollinators, and the value of green stormwater infrastructure planned for both schoolyard and park. They will be “decoded” in a sign to be installed at Melvina Park.

Will has always felt connected to water and curious about what’s living beneath the surface. He grew up in Oconomowoc, Wis. near Lac la Belle, and fondly remembers fishing with his dad. He and his sister would catch minnows with a net for bait. He still remembers catching a baby perch.

In recent years Will’s passion for the water saw him volunteer at Milwaukee Riverkeeper river cleanups and even dress up as a crane on a boat parade float. Recently he’s taken to “magnet fishing” where he tosses a heavy-duty magnet into the river to pull out metallic debris. “I found a piece of machinery in the Milwaukee River—no idea what it was.”

Will enjoyed both researching and painting his water-themed bench at Green Tech Station. It features the aquatic food chain found in the Milwaukee River including a catfish, northern pike, bass, panfish, and smaller critters that support the food web. “I think I want to continue painting fish,” he says.

Brad Anthony Bernard: A Visual Griot Provoking Humanity Through Art

Meet Brad. Brad Anthony Bernard is an artist, muralist, painter, and associate professor at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, his alma mater in 1993. Brad co-led a (virtual) community walk in the Franklin Heights neighborhood between Ben Franklin School and Melvina Park in summer 2021 along with Wilniesha Smith and Will Plautz.

Brad describes the responsibility of a public artist as a visual griot who documents the times and preserves the legacies of the people.

“Like I often tell my students, as an artist, you’re an educator, an advocate, an activist, and entrepreneur all at the same time. Because either you’re going to be teaching somebody how to do the particular skill that you do, or you’re going to be informing and teaching them about the concepts that you’re picking. Because all imagery brings about question, depending on who’s interpreting it. The days of you want to be an artist because you can be in your studio and not engage with the public around you—those days are gone.”

In addition to copious studio work, Brad has painted many public-facing murals with vibrant color palettes featuring Black leaders and themes of liberation.

“Right now, mission-wise, my art needs to at least express some sort of reflection of history or culture, purpose, or some sort of insight or reflection. It's fun to paint things that are entertaining to look at, but once you pull people in, what do you send them away with. I think that’s important.”

In considering ways that art can serve the Franklin Heights neighborhood to improve pedestrian safety, calm motor vehicle traffic, and call attention to native plantings and pollinators as well as remind residents of the area’s industrial past, Brad observes the power of popular culture icons to communicate across generations. Instantly recognizable symbols or characters from Disney or Sesame Street, for example, can communicate an ethos understood from great-grandparents to grandparents, parents, and children—all without words or context. Building on the power of the most accessible visual art to cue us in to a common experience, Brad and Will Plautz, an artist with ArtWorks for Milwaukee, conceived of a temporary public art intervention of “breadcrumbs.” The “breadcrumbs” could take the form of yard signs or pavement markings to help connect and annotate the way between Ben Franklin School and Melvina Park located just off 27th and Hopkins.

“The breadcrumbs serve as a gateway educator for the youth in the community and also to be a creative informer to the adults in a community,” Brad says. “When an adult can inform a child of something—children remember that.”

Esperanza Gutierrez

She believes that setting an example is the first step towards collective climate action, she is an unapologetic climate activist. She recognizes the importance of keeping our water clean, as clean water is a vital element for a healthy environment - and a healthy community. Gutierrez has been an active community member for over ten years! Learn her story and take on her example.

Travis Hope

Travis Hope created funky benches inspired by his own children’s designs to be placed in Pulaski Park in a community effort to renovate it. He found his appreciation for the river by getting involved in a river clean-up. After participating in several other community activities he became an active member of the KK River Neighbors in Action.

Listen to more neighbor voices…

Click each image above to listen to short audio recordings from the special WaterMarks meeting of the KK River Neighbors in Action on April 13, 2019.

UCC Acosta Students

In May 2018, students and community gathered at UCC Acosta Middle School to share perspectives from three earlier neighborhood walks on water history, green infrastructure, and our urban relationship to water.

Agua = Familia + Comida + La Vida

In spring 2018, UCC Acosta Middle School students and community members came together to reflect on the ways water flows through their lives. Reflo’s Michael Timm co-led class discussions with Acosta’s science teacher Shannon Olson to open up unexpected conversations about water. Students first took turns interviewing each other to get the hang of asking questions, sharing responses, and respectful listening. Next, as homework, they interviewed family and community members. Six audio recordings below represent highlights of these conversations. Then, Acosta’s art teacher Elise Kuhlow led students to create visual art inspired by the recorded stories. The resulting collage of visual art and human voices represent young people consciously inquiring and appreciating the centrality of water in urban life—underscoring the importance of efforts to protect and preserve it.