MARQUETTE — The new red buckets placed along Third Street may brighten up The Village a little, but their purpose is more than decorative.

The Superior Watershed Partnership replaced the old buckets for businesses on Third Street with new ones that contain a message about the connection between stormwater and cigarette butt litter.

The hope is that people will read that message and think twice before tossing their butts on city streets, most of which go down the storm drains and directly into Lake Superior.

Members of the SWP’s Great Lakes Conservation Corps on Friday led third-graders from Sandy Knoll Elementary School from their building to Third Street to place the buckets at Cafe Bodega, Border Grill, Down Wind Sports, Main Street Pizza and the Pasta Shop.

GLCC member Cory Paliewicz talked to the students before their short trek about why their project was so important.

“You have a special responsibility of bringing these buckets to local businesses where people can get rid of their cigarette butts so they don’t end up in the lake,” Paliewicz said. “When people litter and don’t dispose of their cigarette butts correctly, it basically gets flushed into storm drains and ends up into Lake Superior.

“And we don’t want that, because we drink from Lake Superior. We use the lake for a lot of resources.”

Before the buckets could be put in their spots, however, students had to fill them with sand. After all, the red buckets wouldn’t do much good if they weren’t weighted down and blew down the street all the time.

Even putting in the sand had some challenges for the youngsters.

“This sand is super hard to get,” said Christian Linna as he worked on that part of the project.

Teachers Jodi Miller and Nancy Usitalo said the red bucket project is part of a larger effort at Sandy Knoll.

“This is kind of a culmination of our Stewards of the Watershed program that’s evolved this year,” Miller said.

Usitalo said the students read the book “Paddle to the Sea,” and will take that tale into a more tangible form when they launch tiny wooden boats they made into Lake Superior by Thill’s Fish House on Tuesday.

Anyone finding one of these boats are encouraged to report it to the SWP via the Paddle to the Sea link at its website at superiorwatersheds.org.

SWP partnered with the organization Music For All Kids to help teachers at Sandy Knoll educate third-grade students about the Great Lakes watershed in which they live, Great Lakes stewardship and the timeless story of “Paddle to the Sea.”

The students also co-wrote a new song about Great Lakes stewards with musician Jerry Mills and performed it in front of 700 other students as the opening act to a recent concert featuring the band Song of the Lakes.

In fact, they were to sing “Stewards of the Watershed” on Friday at McCarty’s Cove during the red bucket project.

Although the school year is ending, the students’ fledgling stewardship efforts will continue along Third Street, which is expected to positively impact Lake Superior by allowing fewer cigarette butts into it.

“We keep them from going into the ditches and into the lake and making it all dirty,” GLCC member Jacob Mick told the students as they placed a bucket at Cafe Bodega.

For more information on the red bucket program, contact the SWP at superiorwatersheds.org or 906-228-6095.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.