Our school is located in Raleigh, North Carolina, just north and east of the I-40 Gorham Street Exit. We are located on Main Campus Drive off Trailwood Drive. Originally there was a beautiful hardwood forest on our land. It was cleared for farming before 1958. Construction on our campus was completed in the summer of 2000. When our school was built there was a dirt road on the north side of the campus, but now there are many impervious surfaces such as the buildings, a parking lot and the road south of the school that leads to our main entrance. The contour of the land changed when they shaped the land so that the school could be built. Because of the sediment runoff and/or the Neuse River buffer zone they built a catch basin. It is a unique design that includes a landscape plan that will provide natural filters for the run off. The catch basin is there to slow down and filter sediment out before it flows into South Creek, which flows into Walnut Creek and from there to the Neuse River.

The catch basin filters sediment run off and trash that some people throw out of their windows when riding by in their cars. They litter plastics and other non-biodegradable products. People litter into South Creek, surrounding land, and the campus; cars also produce oil runoff and pollute the air. Such pollution runs off into the Neuse River watershed. In this way our school affects everything downstream from us in this watershed. All of our trash and runoff would flow to the ocean if it weren't for the Walnut Creek Wetlands.

Since our school has recognized these problems we are trying to do what we can by starting right where we are. We have begun to landscape our campus to stop sediment and trash depositing into Walnut Creek. Our eighth grade class has already started to pitch in and help with these problems by joining clean up projects and preserve the wetlands symposiums. Small groups of our students are proposing to go to the other schools in the watershed and educate them about the wetlands and how they are in danger. We are also trying to get these other schools involved with us in the Walnut Creek 2000 Project.

In the future, we would like for these people to help too. The Partners for Environmental Justice have cleanups and proposed an Environmental Education Park. This is also a multi-racial project to get different families and communities involved.

Since the wetlands have been doing their job by stopping all the trash and because they become a dumping ground they are now a very unhealthy place to be and live. Oil runoff, industrial and commercial waste, and car pollutants have flowed into the Walnut Creek Wetlands and now it is hard to find a fish in the water; all you see in some spots is oil on the surface. These are just a few of the many problems that are currently threatening the Walnut Creek Wetland. At Centennial Campus Middle School, we support the work of the Partners for Environmental Justice. We also strive to be responsible so that what we do on our campus will not cause problems for the the stream or the wetland.