The Cedar Valley Stormwater Education Initiative

Using stormwater as an education tool

For the last 40 years Hartman Reserve has specialized in bringing the classroom to life with outdoor investigations. We continue that model today and also continue to provide lessons in issues that are timely and affect every Iowan. In 2016 Hartman Reserve hosted 7,149 outdoor education participants. The vast majority of these were school children on classroom field trips. With two lakes, a 60 foot bluff, many lowland ephemeral ponds, a large river, and two ponds Hartman is perfectly situated to “live teach” stormwater issues and so we have created the Cedar Valley Stormwater Education Initiative.

 This initiative provides awareness of water quality issues while providing STEM rich programming as students investigate the reasons of, and solutions to local water quality issues. Nature centers such as Hartman Reserve already have a steady stream of students that visit to engage in outdoor learning activities. This provides a “built-in” audience for municipalities that need to address the MS4 federal stormwater education mandate.

Collaboration in education

Hartman Reserve educators have initiated a partnership with five of our local cities and towns to provide stormwater and watershed education targeted to their respective residences. These municipalities are currently collecting stormwater funds from residences and businesses and are required to spend a portion of these fees on education. We have offered to provide this education through our already established outdoor education program. We believe that working together at this local level will allow our message to reach more citizens.

We love new projects!

This partnership is the first of its kind in Iowa and we hope to build a model that can be reproduced in other locations where stormwater funds are collected. We believe we are vastly increasing the capability of this program by passing the education duties from city engineers to trained naturalists who are already providing field trips and programs to the public.