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Our Mission :: Our
Goals ::
Contact Us :: 2005 Schedule
of Events :: Stream Team
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| Goal 1.0: | Preserve our clean drinking water. |
| Goal 2.0: | Provide relevant educational opportunities in the field of water resources. |
| Goal 3.0: | Preserve surface water resources, streams, rivers and wetlands. |
| Goal 4.0: | Address rural land use preservation. |
| Goal 5.0: | Preserve ground water resources. |
| Goal 6.0: | Increase urban / suburban accessibility of streams, rivers and wetlands. |
| Goal 7.0: | Establish non-profit governing body for honey creek watershed association. |
| Goal 8.0: | Promote implementation of conservation bmps — target key agricultural lands. |
| Goal 9.0: | Assess and mitigate water quality impacts by home septic treatment systems. |
Kristen Lauer, Watershed Director
Honey Creek Watershed
Association
8787 Sullivan Road
Tipp City, Ohio 45371
phone:
(937) 667-7878
fax: (937) 669-3199
email: honeycreekws@aol.com
April 23: 6th Annual Honey Creek Watershed Festival,
3:00-9:30 pm @ Honey Creek Preserve
May 7: Highway Clean-up, SR 201 & Pizza Party, 9:00 am
May 24: Annual Meeting, 6:00 pm @ Silver Lake
July 9: Highway Clean-up, SR 201, 9:00 am
July 16: Stream Team Training, 9:00 am @ Sullivan Office
July 22 & 23: Great Miami River Clean-up
July 22-29: Display @ Clark Co. Fair
August 12-18: Display @ Miami Co. Fair
August 31 - September 5: Display @ Montgomery Co. Fair
September 10: Highway Clean-up, SR 201, 9:00 am
October 4: World Wide Monitoring Day Celebration w/Stream Team,
5:30 pm @ Sullivan Office
October 15: Highway Clean-up, SR 201, 9:00 am
** Public Board Meetings are held the 2nd Thursday of every month,
3:30 pm @ 8787 Sullivan Rd, Tipp City
The Stream Team is an opportunity to help the Honey Creek Watershed Association (HCWA), learn about stream ecology, and have fun enjoying the outdoors. The HCWA monitors the water quality of streams within a 143 square mile area that covers parts of Champaign, Clark, Miami, and Montgomery Counties. The waterways included within the watershed are Honey Creek (along with its east and west forks), Dry Creek, Indian Creek, Pleasant Run, and part of the Great Miami River. The Stream Team has come to the rescue by assisting the HCWA with the challenging task of keeping track of the health of these waters.
Absolutely no experience is needed to join the team. Volunteers meet in the spring for an afternoon in the classroom and the creek learning how to perform biological monitoring. HCWA staff get their feet wet demonstrating sampling techniques. Everyone gathers around the banks to examine the contents of nets to discover a new world of small critters that make their homes in the water. These macroinvertebrates are sensitive to stream conditions and show the overall health of the water they live in. Volunteers are equipped with their new found knowledge, nets, seines, turbidity tubes, identification charts, and report sheets. Training in chemical monitoring is available for those volunteers interested in more precise data and who have a little more time. Team members pick local sites to visit 2-4 times a month and record their findings. In the fall the team meets again to compile results, discuss water quality, and celebrate World Wide Monitoring Day.
The Stream Team is a diverse group of people. Entire families join and enjoy quality time together while learning about science and nature and the importance of volunteering. The team also has members that are home owners along the creek, watershed residents that want to be actively involved in protecting our natural resources, retirees who want to stay involved, and professionals that bring their expertise to the team. Everyone is welcome to become more in touch with the waters that flow through our communities and help the HCWA protect our waterways.
The Honey Creek Watershed Association would like to thank the 2004 Stream Team for their dedication and support. Their findings for the summer of 2004 indicate good to excellent stream health in the Honey Creek watershed.
In 2004 the Honey Creek Watershed Association, partnering with the Miami County Park District, received a grant from the Ohio Environmental Education Fund (OEEF) to develop and implement a model program for the Watershed Wide Education Program to Promote Awareness for the Protection of Watersheds to present to other watershed areas in Ohio. This program was designed to engage students, their families, and communities in learning about how activities within their communities affect the quality of water that is used in their everyday living. Tecumseh and Tipp City School Districts, located in different counties but both within the Honey Creek watershed, were selected as the model school participants.
This integrated water studies program began with high school students, in the fall of 2004. These students participated in a day long workshop that included classroom instruction and discussion on the use of good demonstration techniques. The students first played, and then were taught how to share various games that may be used in elementary level teaching. They also participated in field activities and discussion on basic watershed concepts. Upon completion of the workshop participants earned the title of The Downstream Team. Selected high school students then visited their elementary schools to demonstrate interactive models and discuss watershed principles that focused on how individual actions affect the watershed. Demonstrations used by The Downstream Team included a stream table, enviroscape, and groundwater flow model.
The knowledge gained by elementary students grew with a watershed tour. Educators, assisted by The Downstream Team, met excited first through fifth graders beside the Great Miami River for a day of investigation. Laughter and ewwwwws were heard from students touching and smelling wetland mud while the importance of wetland areas in the overall health of a river and watershed were explored. Students then armed themselves with nets and magnifying glasses and plunged their rubber boots into the river. A new world of underwater organisms was discovered and identified. Students reported their findings and learned how these indicator organisms determined an excellent health rating for this section of the Great Miami River. The day ended with a tour of the Troy Wastewater Treatment Plant. An overall attitude of grossed out hesitation turned into one of grossed out intrigue. This attention grabber had some students thinking for the first time about how simply flushing the toilet affects the environment.
In the weeks following, artist in residence Chris Rowlands asked elementary students to remember what they had learned from The Downstream Team and their watershed tour. Chris used his guitar and thought provoking questions to help students write and record songs about watershed issues (wetlands, groundwater, hazardous waste, wildlife, flood plains, stream quality, etc.). A professionally recorded cassette or CD of all the songs was given to the students to take home and share with their families. To enhance upcoming performances of these songs, Chris equipped students with Q-tips and paint to create huge backdrop murals representing their watershed. Thousands of dots later, beautiful works of educational art were produced.
The culmination of all this hard work took place April 23rd at this year’s 6th Annual Honey Creek Watershed Festival. Students invited their parents, families, and community members to a celebration where they passed on what they have learned. During the festival the artist in residence will helped students perform their songs using the backdrop murals to graphically point out watershed themes. Opportunities were available for everyone to visit educational displays. The day was filled with music, an animal show, and kids crafts. The high level of water in the creek kept us out of the water for the planned fishing, canoeing, and creekin for critters, but even the snow couldn’t stop the learning and excitement!
Throughout the Honey Creek watershed there are many acres of valuable wetlands and riparian areas that have been designed by nature to keep our water supplies clean, help prevent floods, provide wildlife habitat, nurture rare plants and animals, and add beauty to our landscape. The Honey Creek Watershed Association has worked closely with partners that are committed to preserve and restore these areas within the watershed. The Ohio EPA’s innovative Water Resource Restoration Sponsor Program (WRRSP) has enabled the protection of nearly 400 acres of land, within the Honey Creek watershed that will ultimately be restored to native prairie, forest and/or wetlands.
The WRRSP works by reducing interest rates for publicly owned treatment works (POTW) seeking loans from the Ohio Water Pollution Control Loan Fund (WPCLF) while providing funds to finance planning and implementation of projects that protect or restore water resources. In 2002 the Tri-Cities North Regional Wastewater Authority applied for a loan to construct a new pump station. Tri-Cities NA entered into a Joint Sponsorship Agreement with the Miami County Park District, the city of Tipp City, and the city of New Carlisle. The Honey Creek Watershed Association assisted partners in identifying critical areas for protection and contacting landowners.
Through this highly successful regional
cooperative effort, a total of $1,403,809.17 in WRRSP funds were
expended. Fee simple purchase
of roughly 323 acres as well as the purchase of conservation easements
on approximately 72 additional acres was completed during this
two year effort. Some of these purchases were made possible with
a combination
of Clean Ohio Grant funds ($269,424.57), Miami Conservancy District
funds ($11,000.00), and Ohio Department of Transportation monies
($32,585.43). Professional services for appraisals, surveying,
deed preparation and recording, and a state of the art ground water
monitoring
system were also provided through this program.
More information on the WRRSP program can be found on the Ohio
EPA Division of
Environmental Financial Assistance website http://www.epa.state.oh.us/defa/.
Our Mission :: Our Goals :: Contact
Us :: 2005 Schedule of Events :: Stream
Team
Watershed Wide Education Program :: Water
Resource Restoration Sponsor Program
