How do you impact water quality? The answer to that question is what these students at Bethel Middle School discovered during a lesson using a tabletop model called the Coastal Enviroscape. This model has proven to be a wonderful tool for environmental education. Nancy Pryor, Water Quality Curriculum Coordinator for Haywood County Schools, uses this model to teach a hands-on, interactive lesson that creates a real sense of understanding of point and non-point pollution and its prevention.  Students are engaged in polluting the Enviroscape and then make it rain to see how the polluted water ends up in the streams of the water shed. This lesson helps them to better understand the impact each person has on the environment and teaches them ways to prevent water pollution now and as future citizens as farmers, factory owners, home owners, construction workers, etc. As students are interacting with the model, they explore real life problems and consider solutions that are good for the environment, which will make them better able to make good decisions in the future. The Enviroscape model was purchased with monies from the Pigeon River Fund Water Quality grant, which funds much of the water quality education of Haywood County students

The following are pictured left to right: Levi Rowland, Joseph Rigdon, and Nancy Pryor.