Mesa Water District officials hope new learning center for kids has a trickle-down effect
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When asked to envision future career paths, most kids will describe jobs in fashion design and music production or pinpoint lucrative fields such as medicine or law. Few are likely to land on hydrogeologist, systems operator or water distribution engineer.
That is a tide Mesa Water District officials are hoping to change by letting students experience through interactive exhibits how the drinking water in their own homes gets from Orange County’s underground aquifers to the taps, exploring each step it takes along the way.
A new 2,400-square-foot Mesa Water Education Center opened in January, offering more than 20 hands-on stops and stations specially tailored for fifth-graders learning about the earth’s climate, weather systems and the water cycle.
Mesa Water Board President Marice H. DePasquale said officials were considering seismic upgrades at a water reliability facility on Costa Mesa’s Gisler Avenue when they decided to invest $1 million in capital project funds toward the creation of the new center.
“We decided to take the opportunity to focus on education and outreach,” she said Tuesday during a tour of the site. “We need to start doing a really good job at promoting these jobs, given our aging workforce. So, we worked out here what I think is a really incredible thing.”
Kids visiting on school field trips can stand in a mini redwood forest, sprayed by water misters mimicking the coastal fog that, in nature, hydrates the trees’ needle-like leaves. They can drink the amber-hued “redwood tea” formed from the decomposition of redwood trees in Costa Mesa more than 100,000 years ago into underground water supplies.
“We had it age-dated and it’s about 12,000 years old,” said Mesa Water General Manager Paul Shoenberger of the substance. “You can drink it out of the ground and it’s the softest water you can get, but it does have that amber tint.”
A nanofiltration system already at the site, which filters out the organic materials that color the water, is another stop on the tour designed to acquaint kids with Mesa Water District and the vast $1-billion infrastructure that comprises 300 miles of underground pipes, 3,400 fire hydrants and wells with capacities of up to 10 million gallons.
At the end of the tour, students can make their own miniature aquifers inside a jar using a straw to replicate a well casing stuck into a sand-gravel mixture. Through a hollow plastic syringe, they can inject water into the system and draw it out through the well.
Students from Costa Mesa’s Page Academy, who first visited in January after the education center’s grand opening, participated in Tuesday’s tour. Fifth-grade science and math teacher Chris Aihara said the offerings are compatible with what they’re learning in the classroom.
“We study water as it affects the earth’s systems — the water cycle, distribution — and this brings what we teach to life and just makes it real,” she said. “You can see underground what’s happening, usually that’s a mystery. It makes engaging in it all simpler. It becomes something that they deal with every day.”
Natalie Solis, a 10-year-old Newport Beach resident, said she initially thought the class would be visiting an outdoor water facility and was pleasantly surprised by the exhibits and activities.
“It was really cool, because we got to interact with all this stuff,” the fifth-grader said, adding that she still has her mini aquifer from January. “I took it home and showed my mom and told her about it. Now, it’s on a shelf in my room — we made sure my siblings didn’t touch it because I didn’t want it to break.”
Classmate Amelia Mackulin said she learned a lot about how water is pumped and distributed and enjoyed sampling the redwood tea, which she described as having an earthy taste. Did the visit get her thinking about a future career in water?
“They showed a water tester, and I’m interested in that because I like science and math,” the 11-old Huntington Beach resident admitted.
DePasquale said as public agencies across the state experience a “silver tsunami” of employees approaching retirement age, more needs to be done to recruit young people by conveying the breadth of water industry jobs, many of which pay well even without a college degree.
“They don’t have a clue that these jobs exist, and we’re going to change that,” she said. “It behooves us to do that.”
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