Why do we do the things we do??  Today, as I’m sitting on my porch, I’m watching someone across the road washing off some screens outside on her driveway.  So I think to myself, alright, she’s giving something a rinse. I don’t know what, but something is getting cleaned off anyways.  The hose doesn’t get turned off while she runs into the garage for a couple of minutes to get another screen.  She comes back out, inspects the first screen….hose is still running……and finally begins to rinse the second one.  For some reason though, with this screen she comes all the way down the driveway….hose is still running…..and sets everything down in front of her.  What I hadn’t noticed with the previous screen was that she was pouring something onto the screen before rinsing it with water.  Some sort of canned chemical product, dripping all over her driveway, and as she was rinsing the screen, the runoff was flowing down the little hill and straight into a sewer.  Alright……so the hose was one thing, and its been running for about ten minutes straight now….but that crap flowing into the sewer…..that was it right there.  I walked over and quietly asked what she was doing.  “Cleaning my screens for silk screening”  was her reply.  “Whats in the can?”  I asked.  Her reply…”not sure….but I definitely don’t want to use it inside because of the fumes!”

So I mentioned to her that those sewers lead straight to the river a couple of blocks away.  The water that flows into them is not treated like the water that flows down your toilet and drains.  The chemicals kill fish, birds, insects….you name it!  Whatever is directly related to a river is affected by what we put in it!  She didn’t oppose, and thanked me for informing her while she cleaned up her stuff and headed back inside.

The Yellow Fish Road Campaign

Trout Unlimited Canada’s Yellow Fish Road™ Program is a nation-wide environmental education initiative. Since 1991, thousands of Canadians have learned about water pollution and the impact it has on the health of the local waterbody.

Yellow Fish Road™ is a nation-wide environmental education program designed and managed by Trout Unlimited Canada. The Yellow Fish Road program’s goal is to help Canadians understand that stormdrains are the doorways to our rivers, lakes and streams. Preventing pollutants from entering our stormdrains is critical to protecting and improving water quality and aquatic habitat.

It is very important to remember that the water we use in our households, and that we send down our drains does indeed go through a treatment process, and the water is cleaned before entering back into our waterways.

For more information, visit either Trout Unlimited Canada or Yellow Fish Road