The Coldbrook Creek Community recently installed 5 sound boxes in public places along the path of Coldbrook Creek (Wilcox Park, Fulton Market, Highland Park, Mary Waters Park, and Canal Park/Coldbrook Pumphouse). Each box has audio content created by Kate Levy, former Padnos Artist in Residence at GVSU, as well as written and visual information. Narration is provided by Kate, Pete and Mary Lewandoski (Coldbrook Creek Community co-chairs), and Ron Yob (Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians). The info presented covers a wide range of topics related to our watershed, some highlights include:

• Wilcox Park: creek intro, water cycle, watershed
• Fulton Market: creek history, agricultural practices, community groups
• Highland Park: creek history, environmental concerns, personal narrative, railroad/creek path
• Mary Waters Park: lower creek history, Creston Park, Creston Plaza housing development, social issues
• Canal Park/Coldwater Pumphouse: creek headwaters, Native American connection, Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians

A map of where the sound boxes are placed, along with specific site location for each, is available here. Each individual soundbite is rich with information and is worthy of its own blog entry, so in the future we hope to highlight some of these topics and add it to the info found on the Sound Underground page of our website.

In the meantime, make a point to visit these sound boxes and give a listen for yourself!

Nick Hegenauer will be graduating from Aquinas College in two weeks with a BS in Biology. Nick was the first student to work on the River Narrative project in the summer of 2022. The River Narrative project is an Aquinas College project to share the story of Coldbrook Creek- current health and physicochemical measurements and the history of the stream.

Ella Satterthwaite was recently honored as the Volunteer of the Year by the Literacy Society of West Michigan at their Spellebration event. Ella worked last summer as an intern in the Center for Sustainability, is currently a member of the Laudato Si Action Committee, and will do research on the River Narrative project this summer.

Congratulations to both Nick and Ella!

On Thursday, April 18, volunteers from the community joined with students from local high schools and Aquinas College as part of We All Live Here day, coordinated by the Center for Sustainability at Aquinas College. They worked on a variety of projects on the Aquinas campus and in Wilcox Park, including cleaning up Coldbrook Creek itself on campus and maintenance on the trail along Coldbrook Creek in Wilcox Park constructed by the Coldbrook Creek Community and students in Jim Rasmussen’s class last spring, and work on the ponds at Marywood.

Thank you to Jessica Eimer Bowen of the Center for Sustainability for her work in coordinating this event.

The Coldbrook Creek Community and the Center for Sustainability and Department of Chemistry and Physics at Aquinas College are working to grow a partnership around the stewardship of Coldbrook Creek. Part of this stewardship is the development of the River Narrative project at Aquinas.

The river has a story to tell. We are working to give it a voice. To this end, we are beginning development of a network of sensors to monitor stream health and communicate information- from real-time acquired physicochemical data to histories and images of the stream. In the summer of 2022, Nick Hegenauer worked with me on the initial development of ion-selective electrodes to monitor metal concentrations in the water. This spring, Beau Craig is laying the computer groundwork (database and networking) to bring sensors online. And this coming summer, Ella Satterthwaite will be working on sensors and getting the sensors in the stream to communicate and bringing the data online. Both Nick and Ella were/will be funded by the Mohler-Thompson program at Aquinas; Beau is funded by the Economicology Leadership Fund through the Center for Sustainability at Aquinas College.

We now have the site up and running. In the next few weeks, we hope to be able to add more images and stories of the history and health of Coldbrook Creek. We will also be linking with the River Narrative project at Aquinas College.