May 14, 2008 12:34 pm
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By Kelly Young
kyoung@jacksonvilleprogress.com
In the past, the educational outreach efforts of the Neches and Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District have been limited to the distribution of book covers that extol the value of water conservation. By doubling the amount of funding for education initiatives in this year’s budget, the district is expanding its outreach programs by leaps and bounds.
“Increasing the amount of education that we do is a goal of the district this year. We first went through the phase of getting the district started and of gathering data, and now we are making a concentrated effort to increase the amount of conservation education that we are able to do,” said Roy Rodgers, general manager of NTVGCD.
The district’s most proactive new program will involve a district representative visiting each of the 25 elementary schools in Anderson, Cherokee and Henderson counties in order to teach the students the importance of being responsible with water.
“Our intention is to hire someone with experience teaching elementary school, on a contract basis, to enter the schools and teach them about groundwater and water conservation,” Rodgers said. “We are hoping to get someone hired and trained this summer so they will be ready to go in September.”
Rodgers said the district has purchased a groundwater flow model and other materials which will help the students relate to the topic. He said the curriculum will be aimed towards fourth- or fifth-graders, and he hopes to be able to send the teacher back into the classrooms year after year.
“We are targeting the kids with much of our education efforts because, frankly, a lot of adults are pretty set in their ways and it is hard to reach them. Kids are a captive audience, and they learn easily,” he said. “And if you can get a child committed to water conservation, they will usually do a good job of taking it home and making their parents more aware of how they are wasting water — plus they have another 70 or 80 years to live, so hopefully they will practice what they have been taught.”
In addition to the school program, the leadership of the district is making itself more available for speaking engagements and public presentations. Rodgers said he has met with several groups in the past month regarding local water rights, the work of the district and the importance of that work.
“We are also trying to increase our presence out in the community by meeting with different civic groups. Either myself or one of the directors will make ourselves available to any groups or clubs interested in knowing more about what we do,” Rodgers said. “We are also going to try to set up booths at a lot of the local city fairs, like the Tomato Fest, where we can distribute water conservation materials and give out free items like coloring books, leak detection tablets and rain gauges.”
The district budgeted only $6,500 for education in 2007, this year it increased that amount to $13,000 — $2,500 of which is earmarked for a contract teacher. Rodgers said this year’s outreach fund comes to nearly 9 percent of the district’s total revenue for the year.
“We also have money in the budget to hire additional staff as a field data technician, so once that has been done it will give me more time to do outreach myself,” he said.
Retired teachers interested in working for the district and civic organizations interested in arranging a speaking engagement can contact the district at 903-541-4845.
“Our main message is that there is only so much water out there. Only three-tenths of one percent of all the water on Earth is freshwater that is available for drinking, and no new freshwater is being made,” Rodgers said. “Yet the population is growing at an enormous rate, so the only way we will have water for future generations is by conserving it now.”
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