Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Students plant nature park on Fernald site
BY BERNIE MIXON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
CROSBY TOWNSHIP — Under a bright afternoon sun, a group of sixth-graders from Crosby Elementary School planted wildflowers Tuesday, helping to transform a neglected field into a nature park.
In a few years, Ecological Restoration Park — land once used as a buffer for the former Fernald uranium-processing plant — will be awash with wildflowers, shrubs and a forest.
Students from Ross Middle School also have participated in the planting effort at the park.
The project is part of the clean-up effort by site manager Fluor Daniel Fernald. In addition to tearing down buildings, the company is trying to restore areas to their natural state.
“It's not a big area but it is a beginning,” said Sue Walpole, company community outreach coordinator. She said 85 percent of the site will be returned to its natural area.
The area began as farm fields. More recently, it was leased to dairy farmers, said John Homer, who oversees the project.
Educators see the project as a good way to teach ecology and environmental lessons to students.
“The students will get an appreciation of how to turn land back to its original state,” said Ron Mangus, a sixth-grade teacher at Crosby Elementary.
For a decade, Fernald has provided after-school science enrichment activities through the Partnership in Education program.
Topics have included chromatography, rockets, recycling, chemistry, physics and problem-solving. The year long after-school program includes families and field trips.
Last month, students researched the Latin and scientific names of the wildflowers planted there. But Tuesday was their day to sow the seeds at the park.
On their hands and knees, Sheena Niehaus and Nicole Gibbs dug holes to plant black-eyed Susans.
“I want it to be covered with wildflowers,” said Sheena, 12. “I look at it as something I can go visit someday.”
Mr. Homer said in years to come the park will sprout a tall grass prairie and an expanded forest.
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