Just over a year ago, the Spartanburg Soil and Water Conservation District partnered with USC-Upstate and the Watershed Ecology Center to install and maintain a ”Watergoat’ on Persimmon Creek, which runs through the USC-Upstate campus.
A Watergoat is a device that spans a stream, capturing floating litter. This trapped and collected litter is removed from the watershed. As litter, especially Styrofoam, moves through a watershed from smaller streams to larger ones, it breaks down into smaller pieces that become harder to remove. Although Persimmon Creek is just one small stream, the benefits of litter removal will reach the coast!
During rain events, rainwater flows over the ground and into nearby streams. This water flowing across the ground is known as storm water runoff. Everything not attached or rooted to the ground joins the storm water and eventually finds its way to a stream. Everything collected along the way becomes known as non-point-source water pollution, meaning that there is no specified source of this pollution. Most water pollution in Spartanburg County comes from non-point sources.
While it’s unsightly, there are other, more serious, issues associated with non-point-source pollution, specifically littered expanded polystyrene (EPS).
What we generically call Styrofoam is EPS, a type of polymer that is inflated with steam and reformed under pressure to create a sheet of “closed cells” that can then be molded into cups, cooler liners, etc. EPS is non-biodegradable and is expensive to recycle.
Even when properly disposed of in a landfill, EPS items continue to take up a lot of space. When this lightweight material, for example, a cup, escapes a trash can, it can cause even more damage. The cup is blown into a road, where it is run over and cracked into pieces. After a rain, the pieces flow into a stream, where they are bashed into rocks and broken down into smaller pieces or even individual “cells.”
Between the combined efforts of the elements, the cells break down further into micro-plastics, less then 5 millimeters in size. These can be mistaken for food by marine life. Micro-plastics continue to be battered by the forces of nature until they are so small that they become known as nano-plastics. These microscopic plastic pieces are not readily deterred by filters in water treatment facilities, travel through the water cycle and into our environment, and have been found in lung and blood samples of people and animals.
During its first year, our Watergoat device recovered more than 5,000 pieces of plastic from Persimmon Creek! Plastics were the most common litter trapped in the Watergoat, making up about 93% of the litter collected. We found EPS, plastic bottles, balloons, and more.
The next most-collected items in the Watergoat were smoking-related products and PPD, at only 2%. Finally, we discovered a significant amount of clothing-related items, paper, glass, and metal, that were all removed from the Watergoat, and therefore from the watershed that provides drinking water and recreational waters to Spartanburg County.
Because Spartanburg is close to the top of the watershed, removing all this litter is beneficial as it reduces litter making its way to the Atlantic Ocean.
What can be done to reduce the number of harmful plastics?
In the saying “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” reduce comes first for a reason. The less plastic you use, the less there will be in landfills and in our waters. Look at what you use that is made of plastic and come up with reusable or recyclable alternatives; there are a lot out there.
Reuse the plastics you already have and recycle what cannot be reduced or reused if the items are accepted by your local recycling program.
Finally, help to raise awareness of water quality and storm water runoff issues. Keep One Spartanburg Beautiful and the Spartanburg Soil & Water Conservation District are looking for artistic designs to be installed at the branches of the Spartanburg County Public Library, promoting the idea that only rain should go down our storm drains, not trash or chemicals.
To learn more, visit https://www.keepspartanburgbeautiful.org. .
For more information about the Watergoat or to “Guess What the Goat Got” to be entered into our monthly drawings for $25 to the Hub City Farmer’s Market, visit SpartanburgSWCD.org.
L. Beth Button is Spartanburg Soil & Water Conservation District coordinator and Watershed Ecology Center outreach coordinator.