Storm Drains Project - Kevin You

Our final project spotlight for this semester is Kevin You, a senior at Palo Alto High School who worked on a storm drains protection project.

To begin, Kevin did a bit of background research and found that storm water pollution is a major problem since it causes health problems, causes flooding, and pollutes wildlife. This disrupts the ecosystem and can cause a terrible chain effect in the environment.

He also found that currently, there are only two local organizations working on this problem: California Coastal Commission and Save the Bay. Therefore, there is a lot that could be done to improve this field.

To solve this problem, Kevin created an initiative to stencil storm drains around his school with signs that would deter people from throwing trash in them. Since the drains at Palo Alto High School do not have any signs, he decided that this would be the best way to prevent storm water pollution in his local community.

In the end, Kevin and his project members were able to stencil 16 storm drains around Paly with signs that said “Do Not Dump, Drains to Bay.” View his presentation about his project here.