All News Releases By Date

LOCAL RIVER NETWORK TO GET $96K EPA GRANT, STUDENTS TO DO WATER TESTING DEMO AT WORLD WATER MONITORING DAY CELEBRATION OCT. 18 AT MISSOURI RIVERFRONT IN ST. CHARLES

Release Date: 10/17/2005
Contact Information:

Environmental News
Martin Kessler
913-551-7236
816-896-0023 (cell for event)

NEWS ADVISORY

October 17, 2005

LOCAL RIVER NETWORK TO GET $96K EPA GRANT, STUDENTS TO DO WATER TESTING DEMO AT WORLD WATER MONITORING DAY CELEBRATION OCT. 18 AT MISSOURI RIVERFRONT IN ST. CHARLES

Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for EPA's office of water, and Jim Gulliford, EPA Region 7 administrator, will present a $95,900 grant to the Missouri River Communities Network and participate in hands-on water testing of the Missouri River with a "stream team" from Francis Howell High School on Tuesday in St. Charles, Mo.

What:	Grant presentation, stream team demonstration, World Water Monitoring Day celebration
When:	Tuesday, October 18 from 2 to 3:15 p.m.
Where:	Jaycee Stage in Frontier Park at the Missouri Riverfront in historic St. Charles (directions below)

Grumbles and Gulliford will join Floyd Gilzow, deputy director for policy for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, MDNR staff, and other partners, including the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), Greenway Network, and AmeriCorps, to celebrate World Water Monitoring Day. October 18 caps off a month-long monitoring effort when people throughout the world test the quality of their local watersheds and enter the results into an international database. (More info at: http://www.worldwatermonitoringday.org)

Grumbles will discuss the importance of World Water Monitoring Day. "Across America and in over 60 other countries, citizens are marking World Water Monitoring Day by measuring the health and treasuring the wealth of their watersheds. Schools and communities are teaching the cardinal rule of water stewardship: More monitoring means more awareness and action to conserve, restore, and protect one of the Earth's greatest resources," Grumbles said.

Steve Johnson, executive director of the Missouri River Communities Network, will host the event and accept the grant check from EPA. The money will fund a project to teach 40 teachers about storm water runoff and water quality monitoring, and how to integrate a clean water curriculum that meets state education standards. October is Children's Health Month, when EPA highlights the importance of protecting children from environmental risks.

Event attendees will accompany the stream team down to the Missouri River, where the students will lead a water testing session and look for certain animal species that indicate the health of a stream. Missouri has one of the nation's best volunteer monitoring programs with more than 2,500 stream teams assisted and coordinated by MDNR and MDC.

The event will begin with an informal poster session, where exhibits of the partners' various water projects will be displayed. One of those projects is EPA's Great Rivers Ecosystems study, one of the most comprehensive scientific surveys ever done on the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers. (More info at: https://www.epa.gov/nheerl/three_rivers/index.html)

Officials will be available for questions during the 15-minute poster session and the water testing session at the conclusion of the event.

DIRECTIONS: Take I-70 (from east or west) to the 5th Street exit and go north on 5th Street. Turn right on Boone's Lick Road and go about four blocks to Riverside Drive. Left on Riverside (heading north) to around First Capitol Drive. Parking is available on the west side of Riverside Drive, and the Jaycee Stage is nearby on the other side of Riverside.