Save the Rain

Week of November 23, 2025 – November 29, 2025

by Anna Stunkel, Environmental Educator

Onondaga Lake is one of my favorite local areas to go birding. During spring and fall, you can find a colorful variety of ducks on the water. In winter, I have counted almost 100 Bald Eagles there at one time. It is teeming with life, but it hasn’t always been this way. Factories once dumped waste into the lake with little regulation. It is one of the dirtiest lakes in the world, but many people have been working hard to improve this situation. 

There are still a lot of issues going on with pollution in the lake. When I drive by it on Rt. 690, you can smell it from the highway sometimes. The combined sewer system sometimes overflows, dumping polluted water into the lake through outflow pipes. Pollution such as trash, animal waste, road salt, pesticides, fertilizer, and eroding soil flow into the lake when it rains. Keeping it cleaner is an ongoing project, so it’s crucial that younger generations understand what’s happening with this large body of water in their city. We have a lot of work to do if we want to make the lake a safer environment for humans and wildlife. 

Our Baltimore Woods educators are currently teaching a Nature in the City lesson all about keeping water clean in Syracuse. The lesson was started in partnership with a program called Save the Rain, and it involves showing students a model of the city. We sprinkle “pollution” (sprinkles and powdered paint) all over the model, and then a “rain cloud” (water spray bottle) descends from overhead. Students watch as pollution-filled water flows all over the landscape, finally pooling in Onondaga Lake. Would they want to drink that water or brush their teeth with it, we ask? “No way!” they enthusiastically reply. 

This leads to a discussion about how we can help keep the lake cleaner. Students often suggest not littering and blocking the pollution in some way. For the second “rainstorm,” we scatter a variety of things that represent green infrastructure around the city. Rain gardens, green roofs, rain barrels, and porous pavement all soak up water, slowing down the flow of pollution into Onondaga Lake. This time, students notice that the lake is cleaner after we spray the polluted city.

This activity instills a sense of care for the lake, especially since we also discuss the many ways that humans use water every day. While Onondaga Lake isn’t clean enough for us to get drinking water from it, it’s not healthy for any of us to live near a lake that’s full of pollution. People who work for places like wastewater treatment plants and lake cleanup crews play an important role in helping. We can help, too, by doing things like cleaning up litter, planting rain gardens, and using rain barrels.

I love seeing how much the students care about their community when we teach this lesson. They want to clean up litter and make the lake a safe place for animals to live. The demonstration is a good reminder that we can work together to solve big problems.

I hope that next time these students visit local spots like Onondaga Lake Park, they enjoy observing the wildlife there and remember how we can all care for and respect the water around us!

We invite our members to enjoy a weekly blog written by our naturalists. Every blog will be uniquely different but always inspired by nature. We may share a memory from a recent hike at The Woods or teach you about an animal or plant that lives on the preserve. No matter the topic, we will be sharing with you our passion for nature and celebrating the connections we all have to the natural world. Each blog will be connected to a weekly set of activities and ideas to help you put nature in your hands, even if you’re at home!