CHESAPEAKE - Meet the “Green Team” – 75 gifted-and-talented 3rd-graders from Chesapeake who spent their school year learning about the polluted Elizabeth River and encouraging its revival.

As part of this intense, environmental-education class, which wrapped up this week, the students lobbied government officials, researched the many ailments afflicting the river, created cleanup models, painted murals, made speeches, wrote poems, grew marsh grasses, and recruited more than 1,000 local families to change their behaviors to support a cleaner environment.

Oshay Edwards, 8, got his family to start taking their own canvas bags to the grocery store instead of using plastic bags, which might later litter the river and its landscape. “It was hard for me because I really love those plastic bags,” said his mom, Arnella. “But we did it. Oshay was very committed. We all learned a lot.”

The students also came up with the new mascot for the Elizabeth River Project, an environmental group that co-sponsored the class: Slider the River Otter.

Slider coffee mugs, Slider stuffed animals and green Slider T-shirts were created, and teachers launched a Web site – www.otterspotter.org [1] – for people to report otter sightings on the Elizabeth and exchange other information.

“Monitor your runoff and keep chemicals from getting into the river,” instructed Amanda Lavender, a Green Team member from E.W. Chittum Elementary, as she introduced the furry new mascot Wednesday night.

The students from four Chesapeake schools officially ended their scientific odyssey at a ceremony Wednesday at Western Branch Intermediate. The event inspired smiles, songs, cupcakes and plenty of Kodak moments for assembled parents, teachers and administrators.

“These children are amazing!” said Chesapeake Councilwoman Patricia Willis, who invited the Green Team to address the full City Council next month. “They know more about the Elizabeth River – about the environment, really – than the average adult.”

Robin Dunbar, an educator with the Elizabeth River Project, who also dresses up as the English monarch Princess Elizabeth, for whom the river is named, said the program was “our most ambitious to date.”

About 150 public and private schools lie within the river’s watershed in Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Norfolk and Virginia Beach. So far, about half of them have pursued a special class, experiment or project in support of the Elizabeth’s restoration, Dunbar said.

But the Chesapeake program was special, she said, in its aim to change household behaviors among the students and their families.

Under the program, each of the students had to find three families to embrace one or more environmental actions over a three-week period – switch to canvas grocery bags; scoop their pet’s wastes and safely dispose of them; or monitor a neighborhood storm drain and keep it clean of contaminants.

Lynda Northern, a gifted-and-talented specialist for Chesapeake schools, said the outreach touched more than 1,000 families and 3,000 people overall.

The Christenbury family was especially intrigued by the storm-drain option.

“I never realized it was such a big deal,” said Beth Christenbury, whose daughter, Ashley, was a Green Team member.

“I mean, I didn’t know all that waste goes down the storm drain and directly into the Elizabeth,” she added. “It was very eye-opening for us as well.”