Resumo da Viagem...

The trip in short:

What we know: - We know that there is a river that carries our city’s name, Tapera River. This river has some tributaries, where people used to swim in the past. In that time, they could take advantage of the water because it was clean and transparent. - We know that the river was channeled at certain points. - We know that there were floods downtown in the past. - We know that people used to fish and wash clothes in this river.

What we want to know - What is the Tapera River about? How does it develop? - Where are its springs located and what are their present conditions? - Does our drinkable water come from the Tapera river? - Why the river was channeled? - Is it possible to clean up the water? - What stories do people living by the river have? - What are the local fish? - Why is the Tapera’s water so red?

What did we learn?

We knew very little when we started our inquiry. Those students who live near the river were the ones who had more information about it since they liked to swim and fish in it. However, their “knowledge” was superficial and uninformed. This changed during our project through our questions regarding the level of the river’s conservation.

We’ve learned that the Tapera river results from four different springs. These springs first become the channeled Matadouro, Ficagna, Garrafa, and Cinco Irmãos streams. There are other springs in the countryside that flow to the Tapera river too. All of this water creates the Tapera river that flows for six kilometers. It starts downtown and goes through the canal until it reaches the Colorado river, an important River in our city. There is an energy plant at the Colorado River that supplies two cities, Selbach and Carazinho. The plant was very popular among the local people until the authorities decided to close it off in order to prevent predatory fishing.

All of the Tapera’s springs are located in urban areas and they are not well kept. These areas contain garbage and domestic sewers.

Some of the springs located in the countryside are being drained because of deforestation and the construction of new roads around them.

On the other hand, the springs located inside the forest are in good condition. The students often swim in those spots. During our trip they swam and fished.

Another question was if our drinkable water comes from the Tapera river. We were told by the Corsan - Companhia Riograndense de Saneamento - that all our water comes from concrete wells. In the past, the local families used to dig their own wells in order to have water at home. People used to apply a technique called “peach tree stick” in order to locate the better spot to dig. This old technique was based in the tradition of pointing the stick towards the ground and waiting until it naturally moved towards a specific spot. We collected information from elders that used this method before. The students simulated the technique to better understand our ancestor’s behavior. Some years after, people started building different kinds of underground containers to collect rainwater. The first person to apply this procedure was Dr. Avelino Steffens (information collected during an oral interview with his relatives). The first plumbing system appeared in 1928, when Dr. Avelino provided a system to deliver water from the container to some houses. The first concrete well was built in 1956 and stored plenty of water for the entire city. The water comes from an underground spring. Nowadays, the city has 5 reservoirs that provide 50,000 m3. That amount serves 99% of the population. In the countryside the water comes from private wells.

The Tapera river and its streams were channeled in order to avoid floods. The floods were a result of large rainfall and they damaged houses and business throughout the city.

The students were very intrigued about the possibilities of cleaning up the water. In order to provide some answers we invited a geologist to talk with them and organized a visit to a water treatment station in a private industry plant. We found out that yes, the water can become clean again. And that it is very important not to dump garbage near the stream. Even if the water contains chemical components it is still possible to clean it up, but sometimes the high costs make this process unlikely.

Most of the people who live by the river have lots of stories to tell about it. During our work we could bring some of these narratives up. We collected narratives from the school teachers and directly from local residents. We listened to real “fisherman stories”. People usually like to fish, but one of the residents, who lives nearby the connection between the Tapera and Colorado river, told us that there are no more big fish. “They disappeared after the pollution from the crop fields started flowing to the river waters”. During our field trips, the students had the chance to fish. The most common species were: jundiá, lambari, cascudo, pintado and carpa.

The red water is a result of the deforestation. The lack of vegetation drains the ground and it flows more frequently to the waters.

Teachers and students admired the environment around them. The direct contact with nature allowed us to appreciate the flowers and forest beauty and pay attention to the sound of the flowing water.

In the beginning our work was small, but as we moved ahead we realized how important that was and how important the conservation of this small stream is.

The learning process of the subject “sprang” naturally, without doubts or difficulties. There was no need to memorize facts because the knowledge came through an active process of looking for answers in the surrounding environment. In some moments we felt that we needed to go deep in the subject. We used books, encyclopedias and the Internet in order to provide the information. In that case we were looking for the explanation for some phenomenon. But above all there was an action that looked for the theory in order to act in the real world. The following example explains that. We discussed the water quality sample taken by a family from a spring located 30 meters away from a soy field. The students were very concerned about the contamination risk, since the family grows vegetables by this stream and uses the water in their house. They discussed the risks and decided to talk to the family (they do not even boil the water before drinking it). They visited a local tan plant to find out if they drop the chemicals in the Tapera river. There they could learn how the water is treated before being poured in the river.

At that point it was clear for us that the population cannot use the polluted stream. The teachers agreed that the field trips were a very powerful educational tool. The apprenticeship based on an investigation focused in the surrounding environment is a very powerful one and there is plenty of emotion. A teacher cried when she realized that the place where she used to play in her childhood was completely deforested. “What are we doing to the life in this planet?’ she inquired. “What can we do to change this?” We realized how uncertain we were just when we thought we had found some answers.

What can we do? We tried to come up with some ideas to be taken with the support of the local community. The first step would be an invitation to the other local schools to join our investigation. Another idea was to provide incentives to people to build septic tanks in order to avoid dropping sewer in the rivers. A third one would be removing the garbage away from the river banks. We thought that planting new trees in the deforested areas would help prevent erosion. Another idea was to design educational software based on our investigation so that it can be offered to other schools.