Above: Mt. Hope students Rhys Webb (left), Tori Nunez, Sam Collins and Annelise Boylan prepare to plant switch grass along the school parking lot to help slow and filter storm water runoff into Silver Creek.

A partnership between Mt. Hope High School and Save the Bay is helping curb pollution and control flooding, while giving students some hands-on, out-of-the-classroom experience.

Students in Mt. Hope teacher Christine Bean's environmental sciences class spent part of last Thursday planting switch grass along the edge of the high school parking lot, where the land slopes down toward Silver Creek. The project is intended to help filter pollutants from runoff after rainstorms and slow down the runoff to control flooding further downstream.

"When it rains in Bristol, too much water is going down into Silver Creek," said Wenley Ferguson, restoration coordinator for Save the Bay, who is leading the project at Mt. Hope along with Ms. Bean. "It's not just to filter the water; it's just as much about the velocity. There is lots of concrete in the watershed area, and it regularly overtops Hope Street. Anywhere we can slow it down at the source of the runoff is a good thing."

Mt. Hope High School is built directly on top of Silver Creek, which empties into Bristol Harbor under Hope Street just north of Independence Park. The parking lots surrounding the high school are impervious, leaving rain water no choice but to run off into the creek, often filling the small waterway with more fluid than it can handle. And, with its origin near Bristol Golf Club on Tupelo Street, the high school is not Silver Creek's only unnatural obstacle.

"This poor little stream is impacted right from where it originates," Ms. Ferguson said. "You have to look upstream to help with flooding issues. Mt. Hope is clearly a place to fix."

The switchgrass planting is just the first phase of the Mt. Hope project, which is funded by a $2,500 grant from the Bristol Warren Education Foundation. This summer, Save the Bay and student volunteers plan to install steps between the parking lot and the small pond Silver Creek feeds on the high school grounds. The steps are designed to further slow the runoff, giving Silver Creek a chance to drain more water to mitigate flooding downstream.

Ms. Bean's environmental studies class and hands-on projects like this one have helped inspire at least two of her students to pursue careers in the field. Seniors Annelise Boylan and Rhys Webb both plan to major in environmental studies at Roger Williams University and Colgate University, respectively.

"We're getting hands-on experience, not just in a textbook," Ms. Boylan said. "We get to see the actual effect on the environment and help the community with it."

"There is a tangible outcome," Ms. Webb said, noting the class has inspired her to continue studying environmental issues. "Pollution, water, climate change, waste and landfills … it's very eye opening."