No need to worry, insisted Rishabh Sankar, the water is quite fine and safe to drink in New Jersey—and especially in the Bridgewater area.
But the junior at Bridgewater-Raritan High School and five fellow colleagues who are scholastic students from throughout New Jersey have researched and dug into the quality of water overall in New Jersey.
Rishabh and his teammates were part of the Governor’s STEM Scholars program, which offered them the opportunity to present a report on water quality in New Jersey.
After they began to know each other by attending conferences virtually at colleges such as Rutgers University, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Montclair State University, they appeared at a conference at Kean University.
And on May 3 at the college in Union, they placed first among 16 student teams from New Jersey with their report on water quality in New Jersey.
“After we won at Kean, that inspired us. Since we thought that if we did this well in New Jersey, we should go outside of the state,” Rishabh said.
So Rishabh followed the path of his older brother Abhay Sankar, who, as part of the Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology, presented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last year during his senior year at Bridgewater-Raritan High School.
Abhay Sankar is presently a freshman student at Princeton University.
“So we decided to try for MIT, too, and we submitted a paper this summer in August, and then we were notified in September that we were accepted to attend a conference at the college,” Rishabh said..
The team appeared at the school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the weekend of October 11-12.
“We're very proud of Rishabh's accomplishment, not only for his Governor's STEM Scholar recognition, but for his impressive research on water quality in New Jersey,” Bridgewater-Raritan High School Principal Dan Hemberger said. “Being selected to present at MIT truly reflects his effort as well as his capabilities. He is one of Bridgewater-Raitan High School’s finest students!”
Rishabh revealed that their report on the quality of water touched on the results of contaminants that can be found in water and could lead to diseases, but he was happy to report that “our water is fine.”
“Yes, the water in our Bridgewater area is good.”