Central High project gets watershed grant $4,000 to aid salmon restoration research

CORINTH- Applied chemistry students at Central High School now have $4,000 to help their salmon restoration efforts along Kenduskeag Stream.

The seven students and their teacher, Ed Lindsey, were notified this week that their application for a Student Research for Action grant was approved. It was one of 12 selected for funding from 32 applications submitted by students across the United States, according to Barbara Cervone, president of What Kids Can Do Inc. of Providence, R.I.

“The competition was strong and the decisions hard,” Cervone said Monday. She called the work that Lindsey, the students and community members have already put into the effort “impressive.”

“What lies ahead looks just as promising, given all of the good energy and commitment you have created together,” Cervone told the students.

“It really felt good,” Jessica Poulin, a senior, said Monday of the grant award. “We’ve got money to work with.” When Tim Perkins, a sophomore, first read the e-mail that announced the award he was so excited and happy that he ran through the school to tell the rest of the students, she said.

The idea to join the salmon restoration effort was inspired by a conference Lindsey attended that was sponsored by the Gates Mitchell Foundation. The students brainstormed and planned the project, including a bus trip along the 60-mile-long watershed that drains into the Penobscot River. The students took the trip last month, accompanied by representatives of governmental and nonprofit organizations that have made the Kenduskeag a focus for salmon restoration.

Poulin said her group will gather and provide water quality data such as water temperatures and oxygen levels to agencies involved in the restoration effort. The data will be valuable in determining what is causing the lack of habitat for salmon. The stream, which flows through farmlands and housing developments, was once an important producer of Atlantic salmon, but their natural migration has dwindled to less than a handful today.

The students plan to meet once again with those who accompanied them on the bus trip to determine who needs the data, for what purpose, how often the data should be collected and what ideas they might suggest, Poulin said.

Lindsey said students at Bangor High School may work on the project with the Central High School students.