About Community Education

Russian Riverkeeper is very active in educating the public on issues related to water. The Riverkeeper Stewardship Park in Guerneville and the Foss Creek Restoration project in Healdsburg demonstrate the goals of restoring the native plant community and highlight proper ecological stewardship of the River and creek banks. Our Clean Campus Clean Creeks project at Healdsburg High School will provide stormwater mitigation education not only to today’s builders and trade people, but those of tomorrow. Our goal in 2011 is to host a series of lectures, panel discussions and films that highlight both local and worldwide water issues.

Clean Campus Clean Creeks

In 2009, Russian Riverkeeper received a small grant to explore developing a high school campus based project at Healdsburg High School to educate students about and engage them in reducing stormwater pollution. In the exploratory effort several students performed a survey of the Healdsburg High School campus in July 2009 and found 32 individual storm drain inlets covering the 30-acre campus site. The students rated over a dozen storm drain inlets as high risk for pollutant delivery and noted that none of the drains had any level of protection – meaning all pollutants generated on campus go directly to the Russian River.

The Clean Campus Clean Creeks Project is the result of those exploratory efforts and is now under way at Healdsburg High School. Students have performed their classroom education introducing them to the topic of stormwater pollution, which is the leading cause of pollution in our nations waters. Students have also been on a field trip to see the impact of stormwater on our local Foss Creek and learned about creek restoration and native plant restoration. The students are now preparing to build two large rain gardens in the front of campus to clean up pollution from the HHS parking lot on campus. The rain gardens will be designed to capture fine sediment or silt, break down oil and other petroleum products and absorb metals from vehicles that drive on campus.

Project Goals of Clean Campus Clean Creeks

The major goal of this project is to educate Healdsburg students, educators and school officials on the issue of stormwater pollution and empower them to address the issue in their “own backyard” through building several rain gardens to intercept and clean up stormwater from the High School parking lot.

The Clean Creeks Clean Campus project has 8 specific project goals, including:
*Students understand the importance of clean water to the environment and humans
*Students gain understanding of the school site as a unique watershed impacted by stormwater
*Students understand the role impervious sources and traditional stormwater conveyance systems play in stormwater pollution
*Students understand the major pollutants linked to development in their watershed and the impacts they cause to local streams
*Students are able to identify areas on campus vulnerable to stormwater contaminants and recommend pollution prevention behaviors that can be
implemented on campus
*Students realize and appreciate their connection to the earth and water systems
*Leverage the Clean Campus Clean Creeks project to educate wider community on the issue of stormwater pollution
*Students implement one or more stormwater pollution reduction projects including construction of a rain garden on campus

We will be constructing the rain gardens in spring of 2011 so if you would like to volunteer to help please send us an e-mail. We are looking for general volunteers and anyone experienced with surveying, concrete sawing and boring, equipment operators for soil excavation and landscaping and irrigation specialists!