Woodhull Students Learn About Long Island Aquifers

Woodhull Intermediate School students learned about where our tap water comes from during a recent visited by the North Shore Land Alliance’s Long Island water education program. .

The Woodhull youngsters learned about Long Island’s aquifers, which are underground geologic formations that are as much as 100 million years old. Some of the water contained in these aquifers is as much as 6,000 years old. The three major aquifers, the Upper Glacial, Magothy and Lloyd contain more than 90 trillion gallons of fresh water. Water is also drawn from a minor aquifer.

“Essentially, an aquifer is an underground geologic formation, typically composed of permeable rock and/or unconsolidated gravel, sand, pebbles or silt,” according to the Nassau-Suffolk Water Commissioner’s Assn. “Aquifers contain, transmit and yield water in usable quantities. The aquifer formations beneath Long Island were deposited at different times in the island’s geologic history.”

The Woodhull students learned about the importance of land conservation as part of the overall effort to protect the drinking water supply as well as surface waters.

“To better understand contamination and the water cycle, students created mini aquifer models to experiment with how they recharge and how contamination can occur,” said Kevene Lowrie, Huntington UFSD’s chairperson of science K-12.

Since its inception in 2014, the North Shore Land Alliance’s Long Island water education program has visited 16 Nassau and Suffolk school districts and 28 schools and interacted with 10,500 students.