The stream in flood

A great storm hit and we managed to get down there to film it.

Nestle has come on board with this Water Harvesting Project and sponsoring schools with water tanks to collect rain water as well as funding “experts” to assist with installation and other planning.

Upper Stream Planting

The third big planting effort at the Papatoetoe Stream gets underway tomorrow afternoon. So far there have been over 1000 native plants planted along the stream banks that are providing habitats and a food source for various insects and animal life. We wish to thank Waicare and their support in helping us with this valuable asset to our school and community.

Images of before and after planting will be put up shortly,

Whats been happening

• The Yr10 Ecology teachers have had their classes monitoring;
• The maintenance team has removed willows, so the upper end is open to the sky and young plants are doing well;
• the big privets have gone,
• and Stage 2 is ready for planting next term.

Tree Planting at the Creek

The area around the creek behind the school grounds has now been planted with over 500 native trees.

This was done over 2 weeks with the help of Year 10 classes and Year 12 students. Rubbish was first removed from the area and it included mattresses, tyres and shopping trolleys.

Trees were propagated at school and we want to thank Wai Care and BOC for helping us with the project.

Papatoetoe High School & Neighbours, Auckland - Papatoetoe Stream Restoration

2007 Recipients of the BOC Where There's Water Community Environmental Grants

The Wai Papatoetoe project has turned out to one of the most comprehensive projects Wai Care has managed to date. More than 500 year 10 science students have been involved in planting preparation, planting, water monitoring, clean-ups, and other class activities to enrich their understanding and promote guardianship of the stream environment. The project also many other teachers and students from the school, and helpers from the community.
There have been significant positive outcomes from the project, including a huge reduction in the amount of rubbish, the removal of weeds, more than 300 native plants established, a restructured Year 10 ecology unit for 2008, and an educational flyer that was distributed to stream neighbours.

Perfect for blog-watching: Papatoetoe High School's project

This was in the latest wai-care newsletter sent out to the school.

Did you check http://waipapatoetoestreamproject.blogspot.com ? With the help of a PD team, most of the litter was removed, and classes got all their plants in before the holidays, supervised by the resident family of kingfishers. There is plenty more to clear and plant in coming years, and the students and teachers are setting up systems to monitor the hoped-for ecological changes.

We are still working on cleaning up the area and waiting for some of the planting to grow a little before posting them on the site.

Planting out the Riparian Zones

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Key Club get involved

Saturday's weather confounded the forecasters - a warm dry day enabled the 8 students to tug, drag, throw and heave litter out of the stream corridor at Papatoetoe High School. They admired the local eels turned out of their hidey-holes. There were enough assorted items to furnish a house, from a phone and computer to curtains and wallpaper, toys, concrete and mirrors. After a laughter-filled 3 hours, the group retired with Jelena to barbeque a few well-earned sausages. The photos below capture some of the action.

The hands were willing, but few, and we were glad to welcome Lee Bell from Kiwanis, and Gerard from Papatoetoe High School.

Planting

During this week many of the junior science classes have been planting at the stream. With over 500 plants being planted.

These will be closly monitored over the next couple of months in the way they grow and help keep the weed problem down.

Community Clean Up

On the 22nd September starting at 9:30am, students from Papatoetoe High School, the community and neighbours are invited to help clean up the stream. We look forward to you coming down and helping with the cleanup.

Papatoetoe High School
22 Sepetmber 9:30am

The stream cleanup continues

Thought you might like to see the biggest catch yet from the stream, during friday's litter picking by 10SI.

During the next couple of weeks the planting of riparian zones will start to happen. This is the planting of shrubs and trees to help remove pollutants from the land, help clean water run off, and also to provide habitats for insects and animal life.

We look forward to posting in the next couple of weeks the planting that the Papatoetoe High School Year 10 Science students have been busily preparing for with the rubbish cleanups.

Professional Development for teachers

Today a group of Science teachers and one ICT teacher from Papatoetoe High School spent the morning down at the stream with the team from Wai-Care. This is part of the programme that has been setup in conjunction between Papatoetoe High School and Wai-Care. The teachers were shown a number of practical experiments that could be carried out with the students during practical science lessons.

We looked at various sites throughout the 300 metre length of the stream that runs along the boundary that could be used as photographic sites to monitor for the next couple of years, one of these sites is where a storm water outfall comes out and meets the stream, today it was clean and clear, but as previous photos on this site show, it can be polluted and cause stress and death for the aquatic life living in the Papatoetoe Stream.

Also shown to the teachers by a wonderful Wai-Care coordinator - Paul, was the amount of aquatic live in the stream, with a number of short finned eels swimming around in the warmth of the sun.

Also put out during the session was a pest monitoring station, we hope not to find any pests have been through it, but with sightings of rats throughout various other sessions at the stream we are not confident that no pests will visit.

We wish to thank Julia, Andrew and Paul for a great professional development session.

Also we wish to thank James Corbett for coming down to the stream on Thursday, he is the Manukau City Council officer who directs the Wai Care programme within Manukau. He is also the Chair of Wai Care's regional Steering Committee.


Paul with the short fin eels.

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Some photos of the experience for the teachers

What Can Wai Care Groups Do 2

From: waiphsproject, 57 seconds ago

What can Wai-care do for groups, with some photos of the stream project

Where is the boundary?

One of the issues that we face at the moment is defining where the boundary is between the stream and the school and neighboring properties. We hope the image supplied by wai-care will help.

Papatoetoe Stream Project

Papatoetoe Stream Project

From: waiphsproject, 20 minutes ago





Papatoetoe High School Stream Project

Cleaning up the stream

The students have been busy cleaning up the stream and the environment around it, most of the rubbish collected has been loaded into a skip to be taken away to the rubbish dump where is belongs, check out the hard work below.

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PHS has restarted work on the banks of its boundary stream

In 2005 Manukau Water removed low branches from trees there, and other debris that could cause localised flooding. A number of people took the opportunity to express their views to the Habitat contract team. All were in favour of the area being upgraded further by replacing the willows with lower growing native plants.

Wai Care Programme coordinators and teachers have raised funds for:

• removal of the tall deciduous trees, except for protected pin oaks and a few others.
• removal of exotic evergreen trees, but not the native trees.
• planting sedges, cabbage trees, flax, and some more native trees.
• removal of litter.

The work began in August this year, and will continue over the following years, depending on successful funding applications.

Streambank neighbours could benefit -

• attractive outlook
• fewer rats
• more birds
• cleaner stream water
• firewood available
• an interesting place to walk

The process of restoring the stream is to be an educational opportunity for PHS school classes across all learning areas.

The Project workers would like your feedback:

• Could you share with students your knowledge of the stream in the past?
• Are you aware of present problems - rats, other pests, litter?
• If you see the stream change colour, if you see any oil on the surface or the water foaming, report immediately to the Pollution Hotline, 377 3107.
• Have you any suggestions email waiphsproject@gmail.com

Papatoetoe High School in 1959

It has been over 50 years since Papatoetoe High School was built on farm land in Papatoetoe, Papatoetoe was its own town in those days with its own town hall. Now it makes up part of the greater city, Auckland.

Here is an image of what Papatoetoe High School looked like in 1959 and how the stream that we now are busy cleaning up and replanting to provide a healthy environment for the aquatic life and bird life in the area used to look.

The Start

In association with Wai-Care and Papatoetoe High School, the Papatoetoe Stream Project is looking at the health and bio-diverity of the stream (unofficial name Papatoetoe Stream) at the back of Papatoetoe High School.
Below is an aerial photograph showing part of the stream's location.


This image was obtained using Google Earth

This image was obtained from waicare.org.nz

The site is located at
Papatoetoe High, Manukau City
Catchment: Tamaki River-Otara Creek
Longitude: 1766869.167
Latitude: 5905870.225
Information obtained from waicare project database located here

Photos from the Stream

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Papatoetoe Stream Path

Papatoetoe Stream (projected path)