TSU teams with feds to fight water pollution

Students from Tennessee State University have teamed up with federal researchers to fight the effects of pollution on the region's water supply.

In their search for answers, the students and their faculty mentors crawled into the dense network of caves and karsts that are the sources of much of the drinking water in Tennessee and Kentucky. Researchers have found that polluted storm water runoff has had a negative impact on the quality of water found in the narrow, rocky landscapes.

“Over half of the U.S. population relies on groundwater as a source for water supply,” JeTara Brown, a first-year graduate student at TSU, said in a statement from the university. “Unfortunately, when it rains, contaminants can be transported into the groundwater through sinkholes and fractures that are unfiltered. The more we understand how karst systems work, the better we can find ways to protect them.”

So Brown and fellow student Hung Wai Ho worked with professors in TSU's Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences to find ways to improve runoff from parking lots and spills in the Mammoth Cave National Park in south central Kentucky. The TSU team has been invited to present its findings at the Karst Water Institute in Puerto Rico in January 2016.

TSU partnered with the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Western Kentucky University Mammoth Cave International Center for Science and Learning for the project.

Tom Byl, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, has worked with more than 150 TSU students over the past 20 years, including Brown and Hung Wai. In the statement, Byl said the students have brought “new insight and energy to research projects," including this one.

In the statement, Chandra Reddy, dean of the College of Agriculture, Human and Natural Sciences, said TSU was helping to produce more minority scientists in a field that could have a tremendous impact on the nation's supply of clean drinking water.

“Our faculty ... do an outstanding job in training students and the invitation they received to present at this important national meeting is a good indicator of that,” Reddy said.

Reach Adam Tamburin at 615-726-5986 and on Twitter @tamburintweets.