In 2022, a small group of high school students at the Martin Luther King Community Center stood in front of an empty whiteboard, dry-erase markers in hand.
Each was part of Project Invent, a national nonprofit program that provides teens with the training and technology to tackle real-life problems, such as helping people with vision impairments stay on paths or people with hearing impairments react to fire alarms.
But while most groups involved with the program focus on solving problems for individuals, the Indianapolis students decided to focus on helping a community.
At the whiteboard, each began sketching their plan to tackle a century-old environmental problem in the Haughville neighborhood that adults are working to address: How to clean up the water along Belmont Beach.
“There’s still cookouts and people gathering there,” one of the students, 16-year-old Keaton Toles told Mirror Indy. “And we said, ‘You know what? Bringing Belmont Beach back to what it was before the pollution would be an amazing thing and the community would love that as well.’”
Belmont Beach was established by the city several years before World War II, during segregation, to give Black residents access to White River away from white residents. The water, though, was dangerously polluted for decades and still remains unsafe for swimming.
Groups like the Friends of Belmont Beach, Reconnecting To Our Waterways and local and state agencies have worked for years to improve the beach and water.
On land, the groups have revitalized the area, setting up a yearly popup park, trails, fire pits and other features for the community, and they are working with the city of Indianapolis to establish it as a permanent park. In the water, projects like the DigIndy Tunnel System aim reduce the amount of sewage that enters the river.
The park’s beauty is attracting westsiders like Kathy Qualls and her son, Quentin. The two were driving past Belmont Beach the morning of Wednesday, March 27, but pulled in to admire the river from its parking area.
They didn’t know the park’s name or its history, but knew it was a place people, like her husband, would come to fish. Qualls said she would always refuse to eat it.
“I’ve lived here since I was 9, and I’m 60 now,” Qualls said. “We’ve always known this river is polluted.”
That is a problem the students want to help solve. They decided they wanted to join the many others that have done their part to help clean up Belmont Beach by inventing a device that aims to filter out contaminants cheaply and effectively.
The challenge would take them from the banks of White River to the West Coast.
And it all started with a history lesson.
Learning about the city’s segregated past
Toles, Ali Taziyah and Henry Brasher are part of a team of Purdue Polytechnic High School North students who built the device with the help of advisors at the Martin Luther King Community Center’s Best Buy Tech Center.
They began coming to the center in 2022 when they were invited by a friend whose relative worked there. The students, all high school juniors, visited Belmont Beach that year and learned about its history to get a better understanding of its challenges.
Belmont Beach is a section of land along the White River south of 16th Street next to Rev. Mozel Sanders Park.
[Listen in on a walk through Belmont Beach]
The city established the park for Black residents in 1936 despite knowing that portion of the White River was so polluted fish could not survive there and birds avoided the area. Residents were mostly unaware and still entered the water, exposing themselves to toxic contaminants.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the main issues with the stretch of White River by Belmont Beach are cancer-causing industrial chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and E. Coli bacteria.
PCBs were used as industrial coolants and lubricants until they were banned in 1979, after they were linked to various types of cancers. The river also has high levels of E. coli bacteria, which can cause diarrhea, severe stomach cramps and vomiting when ingested. The bacteria can cause more serious problems or even kill small children who are exposed for a long time without treatment.
People now avoid entering the water. Even eating fish caught in that area remains a risky choice, but the century-old problem is igniting a spark in a new generation.
Building a prototype
The students’ whiteboard sketches resulted in plans with different levels of practicality.
Their first idea involved suspending a water filter over the river by connecting it with two ropes held by operators on both sides of the river. A second idea involved creating an anchor to hold a water filter in position to catch pollutants. They decided those two options were not practical enough to pursue.
Instead, they opted to build a prototype of a design that would partially submerge a water filter that would collect contaminants as it floats along the river.
The prototype looks deceptively simple: basically several plastic containers lumped together. But each part has a specific purpose.
The center of the device, a modified cranberry juice bottle, contains activated charcoal surrounded by mesh. Above that, a deli meat container holds the device’s brain, a tiny circuit board computer called a Micro:bit that is programmed to track the amount of contaminants picked up by the device. A pair of empty 32-ounce Gatorade bottles on each side allow the device to stay afloat.
The pieces are held together with duct tape.
“We take the device, put it into water, and it flows through the water freely,” explained Taziyah, 17. “Water then passes through the mesh filter through the back and it gets cleaned out.”
The tiny computer sends a message to the students when it is full or when the filter needs to be replaced. Once the prototype is refined, the teenagers hope to have multiple devices patrolling the river near the beach at once to clean at least that portion of the river.
The device works, but it still isn’t ready for Belmont Beach. They are tweaking it further this year to be able to withstand the river and collect contaminants more effectively.
“The final product will probably be three times the size, because we want a much bigger space for waste to be stored as it’s cleaned out of the water,” said Brasher, 17. “The prototype wouldn’t be able to pick up much before it gets full.”
New experiences
Out of hundreds of entries, the students’ prototype was one of a few chosen to be a part of Future Fest, a national technology conference for student inventors held in San Jose, California.
It was a fish-out-of-water experience for most of the students. For some, it was the first time they were able to fly in an airplane or leave the state. For others, it was their first time getting treated like a VIP.
“That presentation was a bit out of our league,” Brasher said. “I’ve never had a bartender pour me a soda. So, that was very fancy.”
The 2023 conference itself was attended by various Silicon Valley CEOs and local government officials. The students displayed their prototype, which they said received lots of attention.
“Not to brag, but I’m pretty sure our project had the most people,” Toles said.
“We had a constant stream of people,” Brasher agreed. “We didn’t get to sit down the entire two hours we were presenting.”
After their presentation, the students were able to visit Google and Adobe, Inc. facilities. They said amenities like game rooms, kitchens with free food and in-house sleeping quarters showed them some tangible benefits for their studies and taught them that a STEM career was within reach.
“I thought that the only people that could do it were rich nerds, I guess, for lack of a better term,” Taziyah said. “But now I can see that anybody that spends a good amount of time learning how it works and learning how to code can really do it.”
Looking forward
The students will spend the rest of the school year improving the device.
They’re also looking for more high school students to join their team. To learn more about the opportunities available at the Martin Luther King Community Center, check out the website. Most programs accept students from anywhere in the city as long as they can make it to the center.
New members should be prepared to learn how to improve in the lives of other Indianapolis residents through science. When the team returned home in 2023, the students had even higher hopes that their device could make a difference for Belmont Beach.
“It made me realize that it’s a lot easier to actually fix a problem than a lot of people make it out to be,” Brasher said. “Just identify a problem and start thinking about it. Eventually, you come up with something.”
A clarification was made on March 27, 2024: This article has been updated to include additional context about other groups who are working to improve Belmont Beach and the White River.
Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @heyEnriqueSaenz
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