The Mid-Willamette Outreach Group and the cities of Keizer and Salem hosted the annual Water Festival on Tuesday May 28, at the Keizer Civic Center.
Fourth and fifth graders from Auburn Elementary School in Salem were chosen as this year’s student attendees though other schools have participated in the past from both Salem and Keizer.
The one-day festival provides an educational opportunity to students from a different participating school each year with various activities centering around both watershed health and water quality.
The event is held to annotate the importance of water, water-connected careers as well as how water connects people together.
The festival consisted of various stations A crawfish station managed by the Oregon Department of Fishing and Wildlife (ODFW), A build-a-beaver station from the City of Salem as well as a camera truck demo by Marion County. In addition, the Marion County Public Works had some stormwater trivia and the City of Keizer had booths for a spill drill game, a Vac Truck Demo and a stormwater and fish casting station. Finally there was also a macro invertebrate station from the Marion Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD).
According to Keizer Environmental Education Coordinator Jenny Ammon, “The Water Festival stations provide students with information on how we are all connected to water as well as how humans can impact water in positive and negative ways while reminding them they have a role in water quality every day.”
Ammon also noted that this program helps the city meet its public education permit requirement for the city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination (NPDES) permit.
Contact Quinn Stoddard
[email protected] or 503-390-1051
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