What started as a way of demonstrating how clean the water is after being used and cleaned in the Invista chemical plant, the Invista Wetlands have turned into a resource to help educate Victoria and the surrounding communities.

Invista celebrated the wetland’s 25th anniversary Saturday, opening it to the general public to tour what first started as manmade 53-acre wetlands with nothing but fish into a full-blown ecosystem, which has educated more than 82,000 students through the years.

Through it all, John Snyder, 65, Invista environmental science specialist, has been the teacher to the various students who come there on field trips.

“It’s a dream job,” Snyder said. “I get to see something new every single day I’m here. So I’m excited, and then I see the kids get excited as they learn about it, and I get even more excited.”

Water in the wetlands flows in from the nearby Invista plant after it is used in production and cleaned by microbes, leaving nothing but nitrate in it, Snyder said, which is natural in soil and makes for good fertilizer.

“By the time it gets here, it’s cleaner than when it came out of the river,” he said.

When the wetlands were established, it was nothing but the flora and fish they put into it and sand barges that make up the banks on 53 acres of undeveloped land, he said.

However, quickly, a full ecosystem formed as animals naturally made their way into the manmade wetlands, Snyder said.

First, the birds flew over and started eating the fish. Then skunks, possums and raccoons made their way in for the birds, eggs, and fish, then the frogs made their way in. The snake followed to eat the frogs, then lizards, turtles, frogs, bobcats, gators and much more all made their way in creating a fully developed ecosystem, he said.

When he first started with the wetlands, he could see the animal tracks in the sand as they came in and the visiting students would make casts of them as an activity, Snyder said.

Twenty-five years later, many of the students he has seen over the years have become teachers themselves and are bringing their students to the wetlands to learn as well, he said.

“This facility has benefited the community because we can do the hands-on stuff that’s hard to do in the classroom,” Snyder said.

During the event, he provided a tour to a Texas Youth Hunting Program group so they could get a better appreciation of nature and what goes into the wetlands.

“It helps us because we’re next-door neighbors. We try to do a good thing, they try to do a good thing and it’s all good for the environment and it’s all good for conservation,” said Tom Grahmann, a hunting program volunteer through the National Wild Turkey Foundation. “Hunting is also conservation because it helps keep populations from overpopulating and the food chain collapsing.”

Among the program’s tour group included Harper Hubenak, 10, of El Campo, who gained a great appreciation of the environment beyond hunting through the tour and felt it was fun to take part in, particularly the activities they had on off, such as observing a feather under a microscope, identifying animal tracks and planting milkweed.

As the tour ends, Snyder sees the kids have a deeper appreciation for nature.

“You can see it in their faces, and I hope that appreciation sticks with them going forward, and as they grow up, they do what they can to defend it,” Snyder said.