Be the Solution to Water Pollution!

 By: Emily Abrehart and Zoë Abrams

    Water pollution is becoming increasingly more common in Florida. Red tide and toxic algal blooms have been making an appearance at least once a year for the last couple of years, causing great harm to wildlife and human health. Recently, Piney Point, a phosphate plant across Tampa Bay, leaked 165 million gallons of wastewater into the bay (Sampson, 2021). Short term and long term effects to ecosystems and human health still remain undetermined. But the spill is theorized to cause large, harmful algal blooms across Tampa Bay. Not only is this issue greatly affecting Florida’s wildlife, but it impacts St. Pete as a whole community. Our marine ecosystems attract $67 billion worth of tourism (EarthJustice, 2012), proving that our clean, healthy waterways are important to the functioning of local businesses. People come from all over to experience our marine ecosystems; sea birds, manatees, dolphins, mangroves, are just some examples of the natural attractions we have in Florida. Not only does water pollution do great damage to the ecosystem but to human health as well. Unsafe water kills more people every year than all forms of violence combined (Denchak, 2018).
Due to the wide range of impacts that water pollution has and the recent toxic spill, we decided to focus our communication project on this issue. Because this threat has gone unnoticed by locals for years, now is a prime time to communicate to the public. News about the oil spill was all over the news for weeks, so we are drawing on this inspiration to begin a dialogue with our community. We thought it would be beneficial to educate the public about this spill because although most people heard about it, not many people may know what it means. We also wanted to address that this overarching issue is not a recent occurrence. We wanted to teach people that the Piney Point spill is not the only source of water pollution - the constant threat of water pollution is all around us and there are many contributing factors. The Piney Point spill sparked a conversation about pollution in St. Pete and we believed that this was an appropriate time to inspire people towards environmental responsibility regarding their contributions to water pollution in the area.
In order to reach a wide audience, we wanted a variety of outreach materials tailored to different types of people. We began by creating a message box to organize all of our ideas. Then, we made posters and infographics for our neighborhood. In order to ensure we reached our target, the information that our handouts contained were basic facts about water pollution in Florida, the relevant environmental and economical impacts of water pollution, and simple, attainable solutions that can be achieved by most residents. The infographic was larger and contained more detailed information about why water pollution affects every Florida resident while the poster is a quicker read with broad take-aways.
Here is our message box:

 

We are friendly with many of our neighbors and the people that live on our street, so we distributed the infographic and the posters directly into mailboxes to ensure they were received. For the houses we knew had young or middle aged children, we distributed only the posters that contained pictures. This would be more engaging for that age group because the infographics have lots of information and are not as user-friendly. For adults and other college students, we distributed the infographics because they are better equipped for the influx of information and resources provided on the handout. For houses where we didn’t know who lived there, we distributed both. We avoided houses that we believed would dismiss our handouts. We numbered the posters as (1) and the infographics as (2).



    At the bottom of these materials was a custom QR code that when scanned, would open up a Google Form. Here, we gathered our feedback. The questions in the form would allow us to gather information on what they knew about water pollution before our handouts, what they learned from us, their lifestyle, and their demographics. In addition, we included a question that asks about which poster they are coming from so we could measure which handout inspired more people to answer our questions.
Because we live on a street with approximately 30 houses, we wanted to distribute 50 handouts (25 of each). From this number, we determined that if half of the recipients answered our Google Form, we would be successful. However, the price of printing full size professional infographics turned out to be more than anticipated. To combat this, we changed our goals. Now, we handed out 30 (15 of each) and to be successful, we wanted at least ⅔ of the recipients to answer our questions. This would be 20 completed Google Forms.
In addition to the posters and infographics, we created a public Instagram page that would reach a broader audience than just our neighborhood. We posted regularly using images that would catch people’s eye. We wanted the images to be disturbing enough that people would stop and read our captions, but not too bad to the point that they scroll right past. As we learnt in Pezzullo and Cox, images send rapid fire messages to the audience, invoking thoughts and emotions quickly (2018). We wanted people to look at the images we were posting and be inspired to reflect on their own thoughts about pollution and personal water pollution contributions.
We wanted to use a variety of mediums to educate and reach a broad audience of different education levels, ages, and geographical origins. This would be a collaboration with the goal of increasing education about water pollution. As we learned in Pezzullo and Cox, there are five principles of successful collaboration - relevant stakeholders are at the table, participants adopt a problem solving approach, all participants have resources, decisions reached by consensus, and relevant agencies are guided by recommendations (2018). We incorporated these ideas into our content on the posters. We wanted to distribute the posters to houses we thought would respond to the information and have the desire to help solve the problem. Furthermore, we provided houses with the resources they need to determine if water pollution is something they want to help with. Their collective decision to help with water pollution would be the next step in the spread of information and further advocacy.  
Overall, we did not meet the goals we had in mind. Our goal was to receive 20 responses through Google Forms but we fell short by 10 responses. However, even though we fell short on responses, the responses we did receive were informative and let us know that our posters and infographics were successful in educating the readers about the water pollution problems within St. Pete. They also mentioned that the solutions were helpful and that they will take them under consideration from now on. We are disappointed in our Instagram page, that was a complete disaster (To find the instagram: @water_pollution_fl). Even though we posted throughout the time period that the project ran, we got pretty much no engagement. Our photos were not liked, shared, or commented on nor did we get any involvement on the page itself through direct messages or shares. Below are a few examples of the questions we asked on the Google Form as well as some of the pictures we posted on instagram with informative captions.

 

References
Cassels, L. (2020). Polluted waters: Will FL lawmakers insist on tough cleanup
measures?. Retrieved 18 May 2021, from https://www.floridaphoenix.com/2020/02/20/polluted-waters-will-fl-lawmakers-insist-on-tough-cleanup-measures/
Denchak, M. (2018). Water Pollution: Everything You Need to Know. Retrieved 18 May
2021, from https://www.nrdc.org/stories/water-pollution-everything-you-need-know
Ending Toxic Algae In Florida. Retrieved 18 May 2021, from
https://earthjustice.org/features/campaigns/ending-toxic-algae-in-florida
Guest, D. (2012). Report Finds Water Pollution in Florida Costs up to $10.5 Billion,
Annually. Retrieved 18 May 2021, from https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2012/report-finds-water-pollution-in-florida-costs-up-to-10-5-billion-annually
Pezzullo, P., & Cox, R. (2018). Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere
(5th ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Sampson, Z. (2021). Evacuation over as officials say risk of Piney Point catastrophe has
lowered. Retrieved 19 May 2021, from https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2021/04/06/leaking-piney-point-reservoir-down-to-about-300-million-gallons/
Ten Things You Can Do To Reduce Water Pollution | Simsbury CT. Retrieved 18 May
2021, from https://www.simsbury-ct.gov/water-pollution-control/pages/ten-things-you-can-do-to-reduce-water-pollution#:~:text=DO%20NOT%20pour%20fat%20from,down%20the%20sink%20or%20toilet