Twin Lakes Water Festival

Denise Benteman

Chase County Conservation District

2008

Twin Lakes Water Festival

BACKGROUND: Twin Lakes Water Festival is a project under the current Twin Lakes WRAPS Program. WRAPS stands for Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy, a clean water initiative through the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. It is a grass-roots effort addressing water quality concerns on the local level, yet funded through EPA Section 319 funds, as well as State Water Plan Funds. Through this WRAPS project focusing on the Neosho River Headwaters, a large portion of our goals and objectives are met through public education. The Twin Lakes WRAPS decided to initiate the TWIN LAKES WATER FESTIVAL in 2004, and provide this fantastic educational opportunity to area students who were not currently being serviced by a water festival.

What is the Twin Lakes Water Festival? Our event is an educational festival focusing on all natural resources, with an emphasis on water quality, conservation, and local water issues. This day-long event allows students to explore our precious resources through a multi-sensory, hands-on learning approach. Presentations are led by natural resource professionals from across the state of Kansas, and are delivered in a fun, interactive way that encourages critical thinking, problem solving, and responsible decision making. We also stress the importance of holistic, watershed-based thinking.

What are the goals of this Festival? Through the years, our festival has maintained three top priorities. First, the safety of all participants. Our undisclosed location is second-to-none, and the area is closed to non-participants, as well as patrolled by Corps of Engineers staff and local law enforcement. The gate of the site is guarded and no one is admitted into the festival without proper security clearance. Our second priority is to provide an excellent learning opportunity for all participants. As long as our schools continue to participate in our festival, we will continue to offer a fantastic learning opportunity for their students. The majority of our activities that students participate in are correlated to the Kansas Core Curricular Standards, allowing teachers to meet their required standards and benchmarks by participating in our event. Our third priority has been to make our festival accessible to all participants. Through sponsors and partners of our festival, we are proud to offer a chauffeur service to any special-needs participants. Through generous donations of sponsors of our festival, we are able to have schools participate in our event absolutely COST FREE.

Who participates? With traditionally servicing 6 counties, we have been able to educate nearly 1300 students and adults from 30 different schools per year, and have brought together nearly 300 adult staff members from across the state. 2008 marked our 4th annual festival, and we successfully doubled our participant numbers since our first festival back in 2005. Current counties, schools, and grades serviced by the 2008 Twin Lakes Water Festival are:

Morris County

Conservation District

Council Grove, KS

What is learned? The Festival is held at the Council Grove Lake and is an incredible day of opportunity for all involved. All attending students are kept in their home-room classes and accompanied by their teachers and adult chaperones, and move to different 20-minute activity stations throughout the day. Our targeted students are in the 4th and 5th grades and participants are exposed to topics relating to all natural resources including: Migratory patterns of water fowl, wildlife specific to Kansas, freshwater muscles native to Kansas streams, grasses and plants native to the flint hills and livestock consumption, soil horizons, properties, profiles, and uses, macroinvertebrates being used as indicator species related to stream health, water consumption related to availability, landfill construction and importance regarding groundwater, the importance of water to reptiles and amphibians, the journey of a water molecule through the water cycle, states of water and energy, and trivia about local water issues and resources, just to name a few.

Who are the staff members? Our 7-member Festival Committee works for an entire year to pull together this one-day event. These fantastic individuals have been working with the festival since its beginning and have continued to dedicate an incredible amount of time and love to this program to ensure its success. Our Festival Committee members are:

Jim Henry, NRCS, Council Grove

Mike Lowry, US Army Corps of Engineers,

Council Grove Lake

Who are the volunteers? This year our team utilized over 160 high school students from Northern Heights High School (Lyon County), Chase County High School, Council Grove High School (Morris County) and White City High School (Morris County), who worked on an individual basis, allowing their incredible responsibility and leadership skills to shine through. They moved our elementary classes from station to station across our enormous park area, and assisted them with their needs and concerns, as well as assisting presenters with activities when necessary. Many adult volunteers from the area also add to the success of the event. Assisting in every venue from brining food to the part, to assisting presenters, to taking care of last minute needs, our volunteer staff is second-to-none. We also have a registered nurse and EMS on-location, lunch staff, and 2 different teams delivering ice and water to participants and staff throughout the day.

Who are the presenters? Our 95 presenters come from all over the state of Kansas to share their expertise with our students, some from as far away as Pretty Prairie, Independence, and Hays. Presenters participating in our event volunteer their time, whether coming from a local business, sister agency, or on an individual basis. All of our presenters are matched to the activities they will present, and are professionals in the field of natural resources. This year we were excited to be joined by WIBW TV out of Topeka, who presented an activity, and also featured our water festival on the Channel 13 evening news.

Who are our sponsors? Thanks to our awesome sponsors, our festival has been able to remain absolutely COST FREE to participating schools. We simply cannot thank our sponsors enough for their continued support and dedication to educating our future stewards of the land. Our festival sponsors are:

Who are our partners? Our partners are so important to the success of the festival! The organizations, businesses, and individuals who provide support to our festival, through presenting activities, acting as volunteers, providing in-kind services and donations, and media participation, are vital to the sustainability of the festival. Our partners are (and not limited to!):

TWIN LAKES Festival receives an AWARD!! In November, 2007 the Twin Lakes Water Festival was honored to receive the 2007 KACD Conservation District Educational/Activity Event of the Year Award in Wichita. The award was presented to JoBea Titus-Hutchinson, Morris County Conservation District Manager; Linda Stewart, Geary County Conservation District NPS and Buffer Coordinator; and Denise Benteman, Chase County Conservation District Manager and Katie Miller Twin Lakes Coordinator.

JoBea Titus-Hutchinson, Morris County Conservation District

Angela Beavers, Geary County Conservation District