Currents \| April 2013

What will you be doing during April for Earth Day? April is one of our busiest months and we will be out doing lots of public education and volunteer events! Check out our website for our updates for other events. Come visit our interactive display tables or volunteer to do Storm Drain Marking and help us welcome spring!

April 6th 7am-4pm Walleye Run Table at Side Cut MetroPark (come visit our display and education table with Bass Pro Shop)
April 21st 10am-4pm Party for the Planet- at the Toledo Zoo (come visit our display table)
April 22nd Happy Earth Day! How will you celebrate? Tell us on our Facebook page!
April 23rd 11am-4pm The University of Toledo Environmental Fair (come visit our display table)
April 27th 8:30am-12pm Storm Drain Marking with Global Youth Service Day Appreciation Picnic at 12:30pm (register today and volunteer with us)

Congratulations to the 90 young scouts that attended the Youth Patch Day Workshop on Sunday, March 3rd. The group of energetic Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in kindergarten through 5th grade earned the blue and white embroidered Partnering for Clean Streams Patch by participating in various water education activities. Professionals that work to improve our water daily came to lead activities teaching children and their parents about how important water is in our everyday lives. All of the sessions included hands on activities. The kids sang about rain gardens, made worm bins, learned about the water cycle and their local rivers and explored how water is cleaned so it is safe for us to drink. They also learned about storm drain marking and how to protect the water that enters the storm drain system. The workshop ended with a visualization of how little of the water on this planet is fresh water and how only a portion of the fresh water is drinkable. And much of that fresh water is right here – in the Great Lakes!

The participants of the workshop are now prepared to be better stewards of our precious water resources. Many of the participants were excited to come back next year. One parent commented “the kids loved it!” and another pointed out that “there was lots of information that the kids would not have otherwise come across.” A huge thank you goes out to all those who participated and all those professionals who helped make this event possible. We look forward to next year’s Workshop!

Have you seen the 2011 Annual Report? Well, you saw an award winning piece of artwork! Our 2011 Annual Report recently won a Bronze Addy Award. The report, done by Fruchtman Marketing, is a booklet filled with colorful graphics, powerful photos and a recap of the events and happenings of 2011 with PCS. There is a hard copy version (contact the office) as well as a free flipbook version. Check out the electronic version here. The 2012 Annual Report will be coming out in the next few months so keep an eye out! A huge thank you goes out to Fruchtman Marketing for doing such a great job with our 2011 Annual Report.

By Paige Sloma
Two years ago Partners for Clean Streams took a leap of faith and hired an oddball. My background is in nuclear medicine, not environmental. Shortly after I was hired I went with our Program Coordinator to an Earth Day event, which at that time was completely out of my comfort zone. I needed to talk about things still completely foreign to me and talk to strangers. Yikes! As someone that can speak to people about needles, radioactivity and cancer without batting an eye you would think this environmental thing would be so easy. Not so fast. I had to come up with things -real life, touchable things-to get people curious about our activities and want to be part the action and donate to forward our mission. This was the start of the evolution of how I relate to my position with PCS, but also how I present PCS to others, particularly the children.

Many of you reading this have participated in Get the Lead Out! or Clean Your Streams Day and have contributed to the spectacular stories I get to share as I take PCS to the streets. In the past two years, we have saved several great gems for my “space junk” collection as it is affectionately known in the office, including a disc brake, a piece of rebar and a brick from the 1940’s. We also have a traveling Get the Lead Out! bucket so people can visualize the rats nest of monofilament line that comes from fishing snags. We were also asked by the Scouts to participate in their Popcorn Kickoff last year and discuss our project at Camp Miakonda. “Yes” was the immediate answer, but we also needed to have a fun activity for the boys. Naturally my brain linked popcorn and water and the crazy idea of the “popcorn rivers” was born. This demonstrated how water moves around obstacles in its path. It made perfect sense to me, but not so much to the rest of the office. After some convincing and fabrication, Ava and I took our popcorn (water) and four example riverbeds to the kickoff and had a blast!

In the past two years I have gone from listening cross-eyed to people speak in “enviro-code” about BUI’s, AOC’s, CYS, SDS, RAP’s, GYSD and TMDL’s, to knowing I do belong here. But I certainly make them wonder every once and awhile. As I talk about PCS projects and events with people around the area, everyone is interested in the facts, the restoration project at Miakonda, the amount of garbage cleaned up on Clean Your Streams Day, and the odd finds or the massive number of volunteers and coordination needed to get everything done. But I get asked one question more often than others that truly makes me pause:

"How do you get the lead sinkers out of the river?"

Come find out this summer at our Get the Lead Out! events. We’ll share this secret and more. You never know what you’ll find or where you’ll find it! And if I can stretch WAY outside my comfort zone, so can you. Come join us in the river!