The Golden Hills RC&D Bringing Urban Practices to Rural Communities

This multi-site Water Quality Initiative funded project added bioretention cells and rain gardens to county courthouses, fairgrounds, and public offices in six communities across four southwest Iowa counties.  Partners included the county fair boards and Iowa State University Extension Offices of Fremont, Mills, Montgomery, and East Pottawattamie Counties, the Fremont County Board of Supervisors, the Mills County Board of Supervisors, Earl May Garden Centers, and the Fremont Soil & Water Conservation District.  All projects are in highly visible areas with public access to engage a diverse audience in order to promote learning about water quality and to showcase scalable urban practices for smaller communities. 

The practices implemented will treat stormwater entering the East and West Nishnabotna River Watershed areas.  The cities of Sidney, Malvern, Glenwood, Red Oak, Avoca, and Oakland installed practices as part of this project.

Cara Morgan, Project Coordinator for the Golden Hills RC&D, presented to local classrooms about the practices and recruited student volunteers to help install them. She stated, “The biggest success of the WQI project was the involvement of the youth- our ability to go into the classroom to teach about the watershed that these students live in, how their actions affect their watershed, and steps that even they can do to help improve their water, and then taking them out to help build a raingarden for a hands on experience!  We had students ranging from 2nd grade all the way through high school involved.  THAT is the next generation of watershed stewards.”