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School Adopts Goat As Environmental Mascot

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR

cpastor@tampatrib.com

Published: February 4, 2009

LAKE MAGDALENE - It could be the ugliest spot on the Carrollwood Day School campus, but students in the school's new environmental club plan to make over a mucky, trash-clogged retention pond.

With a little help from a goat.

St. Petersburg-based New Earth Industries installed a Watergoat at Carrollwood Day School on Jan 23. It doesn't look a thing like a goat, but creator Mark Maksimowicz named it after the animal because it "eats" trash.

A string of buoys attached to a net, the Watergoat snares garbage before it can get into outfall pipes and wind up in the Gulf of Mexico or Hillsborough River. Carrollwood Day School is the first school in Hillsborough County to receive a Watergoat, a donation worth about $1,000 from New Earth Industries.
New Earth also left the private school with nets and pickers for students to clear out the trash the Watergoat snags.

Susan Sand, a mother who is one of the environmental club's leaders, said students have a portable scale that will let them weigh the trash bags and track how much they collect.

The club formed about two months ago. Students recently got a bin to collect metal on campus and are waiting for a bin for paper recycling. Sand and Abigail Miller, the club's other leader, heard about the Watergoat when Maksimowicz spoke at an EverGreen Schools Alliance meeting on ways students and PTAs could make schools greener.

As soon as Sand heard about the Watergoat, she knew her school had to have one.

"It's a simple device, but it does so much," Sand said.

Maksimowicz and his sister, Janice Whitmore, a New Earth partner, call it "caveman technology." The buoys form a barrier between a pond and the stormwater outfall pipe or drain. A weighted net traps the trash before it drifts into the pipe, but the holes are large enough for fish to pass through. Two tall stakes hold the buoys in place and allow them to rise and fall with the water level, Whitmore said.

The Watergoat also can be outfitted with absorbent socks that can absorb harmful chemicals, such as motor oil and fuel.
Whitmore introduced the Carrollwood Day School students to the Watergoat on the day it was installed. They stood around the retention pond, at the fringe of the campus abutting Bearss Avenue. Though the pond is fenced off, bottles, cans and food wrappers had managed to make their way from Bearss to the water, cluttering the pond when water levels were low and rushing into the drain when they rose.

And once it gets into the drain, Whitmore said, it dumps into the Hillsborough River.

Birds don't want to hang out in that environment, she said. Animals don't want to make their homes there.

"You are our future generation. We have got to set the example," Whitmore said. "You are setting the example for other schools."

While she explained to the students how the Watergoat worked, Maksimowicz and her husband, David, donned wading boots and used pool nets to clear the existing trash. Students will take care of the eventual garbage the Watergoat will collect, but many wanted to start right away.

They grabbed bags and pickers and began to walk around the pond's fringe, removing all the debris they could.

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503.

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