The Water Table
The Water Table
Clean Water is Everyone's Responsibility | #140
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In the quest for better water quality, farmers and city residents share a vital common goal: protecting our shared water resources by managing runoff. Host Jamie Duininck speaks with Ann Zawistoski and Sophie Wicklund of the Adopt-a-Drain program to draw a direct line between agricultural and urban water management practices. Just as farmers use practices like buffer strips, bioreactors, and controlled drainage to minimize nutrient loss, our “city cousins" clean their local storm drains to prevent urban pollutants like leaves and debris from entering waterways.
Adopt-a-Drain empowers the public to take responsibility for stormwater management, recognizing that urban stormwater runoff is a major source of water pollution. The program encourages residents to adopt a storm drain near their home and clean it just twice a month. This simple, hands-on approach transforms the public's understanding of their impact on the watershed, leading to broader behavioral changes. The collective results prove the power of individual action, with over 30,000 adopted drains and nearly one million pounds of debris removed across the country. Tune in to discover the powerful parallels between urban and agricultural water quality practices and how community engagement is successfully working toward clean water for everyone.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:36 Adopt-a-Drain Guest Introductions
01:57 The Urban Stormwater Challenge
04:00 How the Adopt-a-Drain Program Works
05:40 Nearly 1 Million Pounds of Debris Removed
06:35 Behavior Change
07:50 Adopt-a-Drain's Origins and Inspiration
10:52 Why Small, Frequent Cleanings Make a Big Difference
13:56 Engaging Participants Year-Round
15:53 Funding and Partnerships
19:42 The Parallels to Ag Water Management
25:39 Expanding the Movement
Related Content:
- #138 | Set It & Forget It... Making Controlled Water Management Accessible with Agri Drain
- #56 | A More Efficient Approach to Water Quality: Batch and Build
- #14 | Opportunities in Water Quality
- Adopt-a-Drain
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Ann Zawistoski (00:00):
The program really is trying to reach people again and kind of connect them with this issue along with giving them a very concrete action that they can take.
Sophie Wicklund (00:08):
People were more mindful of the way that the stormwater system works, and how something that's in their yard would maybe end up in the local body of water.
Ann Zawistoski (00:19):
It's really fun to have tens of thousands of people working on this.
Sophie Wicklund (00:23):
Cool to hear about their goals, and their interests for their specific community.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well, welcome to the Water Table Podcast. Today, I have a couple of guests with me from Adopt-a-Drain. Ann is the director of a national adopted drain program and community outreach at the Center of Global Environmental Education. The program uses behavioral changes best practices to engage the public and take responsibility for keeping a storm drain near them clean of debris to protect their local waters and reduce urban flooding.
(01:04):
Sophie is the assistant director at Adopt-a-Drain and Community Outreach. She oversees community engagement, education, and stewardship initiatives related to stormwater and watershed health. And that leads us right to kind of talking about what we want to talk about today with Adopt-a-Drain in the urban areas, Hamlin for those listeners.
(01:25):
We have listeners all over the world, really. Some people from Europe like to listen, and that are in our industry. But Hamlin University is a urban university in Minneapolis, St. Paul area in St. Paul. And so it's right in the right spot for us to consider adopting a drain and considering the kind of things that could happen with our water in an urban setting.
(01:52):
So Ann, why don't you talk a little bit about that and just kind of start us off on who you guys are.
Ann Zawistoski (01:59):
Yeah. So maybe I'll just start off with saying that we know that urban stormwater runoff is one of the major contributors to water issues in our local lakes and streets and rivers. So what we're really trying to do is connect with just the general public that live in urban areas to help them understand, because I think it's not really something people typically think about. Rainwater, you think of as a natural, wonderful cleansing sort of thing, but then when it hits the road, brings everything with it.
(02:30):
We've got beautiful tree coverage in a lot of Minneapolis, St. Paul, big, old, beautiful trees, which means huge amounts of leaves as well that get dropped onto the street. And so all of that, all of the phosphorus, all the nitrogen then just gets taken straight into Mississippi River or a lot of our lakes. And then throughout the country as it makes it way down the Mississippi River.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah. And for those that don't know, many of us do that live here, but the Mississippi River runs right through the heart of Minneapolis, St. Paul. And so that certainly can happen. And do you know any statistics or there's some kind of general statistics, but around the impervious soil, or impervious land areas of an urban area. I've always heard in the very urban areas, it's like 90% of the land is impervious. And so you got these interesting issues because in agriculture, we have some of the same issues with phosphorus and nitrogen, two words you just use as a problem.
(03:35):
But our landmass is 85% pervious. And so the challenges and how you go about them are a little bit different in each environment for the same problem. So let's talk a little bit about Adopt-a-Drain, and what the program is, and how you engage community, how you engage people and what their responsibilities are.
Ann Zawistoski (03:59):
Yeah. So the program really is trying to reach people again and kind of connect them with this issue along with giving them a very concrete action that they can take. So we know from being in the environmental education field that if you just tell people about an issue without giving them any agency and making a difference, it can really lead to apathy and feeling like there's just nothing to be done.
(04:23):
And so we wanted to raise awareness and help people understand about stormwater runoff issues, but then also give them an action that was going to make a difference. And it turns out storm drains are all throughout urban areas. Most people who live on a street, there's probably one or two on your street there. So it's a very, very concrete ha ha location that people can choose to then remove the debris, which again, would then be taken down that storm drain into the water.
(04:53):
And so we ask people find a storm drain or two near them. On average, our participants adopt two drains, and they just keep an eye on it. We ask twice a month that they take a look, make sure there's nothing blocking the drain, there's nothing on the drain, there's nothing that's concerning. If there is something concerning, they would contact their city or their county, but otherwise, sweep up and rake up the leaves or the trash. And then trash goes in the trash, leaves would probably go in their lawn waste pickup.
(05:26):
And then we ask people to report what they've removed. And so that's kind of a fun thing too, where we can say, "Oh, look, we've gotten nearly a million pounds of debris that people have removed from their lakes and rivers by taking them off the street."
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, that's great. And I think it creates some motivation for people when they see those kind of numbers. And we can make a difference in just one fall season or one summer season as other people are reporting, it creates a sense of community and a sense of that motivation and momentum going forward.
(06:06):
What kind of feedback do you get from some of the community members that are helping? But is there excitement? Is there at some point some frustrations that come along with it? And how can we as members of the community that are working on water quality issues help with that? What type of opportunities are there?
Sophie Wicklund (06:31):
A couple of years ago, we did a survey for our participants to see about some of their motivations for participating in the program and sorts of other actions they might have been taking in their lives as a result of participating if it was helping them to think in more of a holistic way about water. And some of the feedback we got from that was that people were more mindful of the way that the stormwater system works and how something that's in their yard would maybe end up in the local body of water.
(07:11):
And so having that knowledge, they were more mindful about using fertilizers on their lawns, washing their cars in their driveways, all the things that because they're understanding that bigger system, they knew that that was going to be impacting their local bodies of water.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Backing up a little bit, Sophie, you are at Hamlin for the Global Environmental Education Center there. How long have you been with Adopt-a-Drain and in this position?
Sophie Wicklund (07:40):
I just reached two years working for the program, yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Okay. So the program was roughly 10 years old or when you started a couple of years ago, because it is started in 2014. Can one of you give us a background on that? How did that start? How did it start at Hamlin? Why Hamlin? Why Adopt-a-Drain, that kind of thing?
Ann Zawistoski (08:03):
Yeah. So as part of the Center for Global Environmental Education, Hamlin or the center had started a group in the metro area called the Metro Watershed Partners. And so that is made up of cities, counties, watershed districts, and nonprofits that are specifically interested in raising awareness around non-point source pollution, stormwater runoff, those types of issues.
(08:32):
Really, it kind of came up through, there's a program called the MS4 permit that cities who have separated storm sewer systems that are separate from their kind of wastewater treatment systems, they have to have a permit to make sure that the water that goes down is not overly polluted and as part of that have to do education and outreach actions. And so in the metro area, we have a lot of those kind of organizations, cities, again, cities, counties, watershed districts.
(09:04):
And so they wanted to all work together because, again, we know water doesn't care about municipal boundaries, messages don't really care about municipal boundaries either, so we wanted to work together to do some of this education and outreach around the program or the stormwater pollution issue. So that group, which it's got about 70 organizations as part of it, Hamlin actually does the facilitation and the coordination for that group and running it.
(09:31):
And that group back in 2011 was really looking for a way to expand their education and outreach. So it wasn't just a billboard saying, "Hey, water goes through the river." But again, have a behavior change aspect to it and ask people to actually do a difference and then be able to measure that. And so that's where the first thinking started of what kind of program, what would that look like? It started as a storm during goalie with more of a hockey theme to it, which is pretty fun. But as we were expanding it out, wanted to make it a little bit more accessible to everyone.
(10:10):
And so that's where this idea of adopt a drain came from. Actually, it was inspired by, in Boston, there's an adopt a fire hydrant program where in the winter, people will adopt their fire hydrant and shovel it out so that it's accessible if need be. And so that kind of, you have a map, people take responsibility for one or two things. It's not a big burden on any one person, but altogether can be a big difference. That's really what led to the adopt-a-drain program.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah. I think when you look at the opportunity you have with someone adopting a drain in the area. I don't know if you have statistics, but you certainly have situations you know about where other people don't join the program, but they see what's happening, and they also join in the practice alone by themselves. And so whatever statistics you can report, it's somewhat more than that. It could be double, could be triple, whatever.
(11:13):
So it's kind of an awareness issue, too of just like, this is a good idea. Whether you're actually joining our cause and adopting a drain and being responsible for it and having that responsibility, if you're being more aware, picking up stuff in your driveway, whether it's debris or leaves picking up on your lawn that is going to get to the storms who are drained, eventually you're all helping in one way or another.
(11:40):
So just the awareness that you guys can bring is really important.
Ann Zawistoski (11:44):
Yeah, thanks. I think our participants act as really great educational ambassadors about that. Someone sees you cleaning up and raking up around your storm drain and says, "What are you doing?" And then you tell your neighbor about it. And that, I think, makes a much stronger impression than someone at some university telling you to do something or someone from the city telling you to do something. So it really is kind of that grassroots community-based program that we want to encourage.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah. My assumption would be if you are reporting your statistics, and you're at that kind of level, you're probably somewhat passionate about what you're doing, which then also means you're willing to share with your neighbors and those in the area. And in some of my notes here, you have participants that are naming their drains, which I just thought is kind of comical and fun. It makes for a fun neighborhood thing.
(12:44):
And I can visualize just in places I've lived over my life when you have areas that are more challenging than others, low areas, maybe a big oak tree that if it doesn't get managed, that drain close to that oak tree, then you're going to have localized flash flooding issues and stuff. So that gives you then the opportunity to name that something that Nimis drain, so to speak. So those kind of things create community engagement and community involvement that's pretty neat in a world right now that needs that kind of thing.
(13:26):
And if we can, there's a lot of division and a lot of polarization. And if we can rally around a storm drain, that's interesting in itself, so.
Ann Zawistoski (13:37):
We'll take it. We will take it.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
So, Sophie, tell me a little bit about what's the day in the life of Sophie Wicklund look like at Adopt-a-Drain?
Sophie Wicklund (13:46):
That's a great question. It's full of variation, I would say. But I think a very rewarding part of my job is that I get to interface with both the participants of the program because we answer their emails if they have questions. We help direct them to resources if they are wondering about an infrastructure issue. But then also we get to work with our city and county and watershed district partners all over the country.
(14:18):
We have over 160 different jurisdictions that we work with, and it's really cool to hear about their goals and their interests for their specific community. It really varies. Different climates have different issues going on. I know in the northern climates, road salt is a big issue for cities, but in some of our southern climate partners, flooding has been their main issue that they're wanting this program to help with. And so yeah, I think it's cool to get so many different perspectives in that way.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
One of your top five pro Programs is in Houston, Texas. And Houston is a very urban area and it does see a lot of moisture, a lot of rain in a year. And so storm rains are a very important part of their infrastructure and also very important that they're working properly. So that's great to know.
Ann Zawistoski (15:23):
I should jump in that Houston has their own programs, so we actually don't run Houston's program, although we're certainly aware of it. So there are some cities that run them on their own and then some cities that partner with us. But yeah, Houston is a great example with the flooding.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah. So when you talk about that kind of thing, how does it work? Where does your funding come from? What does that look like to continue to grow?
Ann Zawistoski (15:51):
Yeah, so our funding comes from our partners. A lot of our communities have a stormwater assessment fee that anyone that lives in the community has to pay, and that money has to go towards some kind of stormwater programming. And so education and outreach and cleaning can absolutely be a part of that. And so that's the bulk of our funding. We get a little bit through grants, but most of it is just straight funding from our partners.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
How are those fees, do you know how they're determined in those communities? Is that something that the city or even watershed chooses to add to the tax base? And then does the taxpayer vote on that or how's that work?
Ann Zawistoski (16:37):
Oh, that is an excellent question. I don't know if it's voted on. I think it probably is.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Probably is in a larger package of-
Ann Zawistoski (16:51):
Yeah, and I know they're always called fees and not taxes, but I don't understand myself what the difference would be there. But yeah, so that would be something that a community would talk about and bring it up. And we know some of our partners actually, as part of their Adopt-a-Drain program, if you participate, you get a partial rebate on your fee because you're part of the program. Not all of our partners do that, but I've seen that in a couple of our partners.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Good. How about some of the other statistics? You'd mentioned almost a million pounds of debris removed from storm drains in Minnesota alone. But tell me just some of the other great statistics that are going to kind of stand out to people.
Ann Zawistoski (17:40):
What did we just hit, 30,000 storm drains adopted, and 20,000 participants across the country? So it's really fun to have tens of thousands of people working on this. And yeah, we expect that we will hit a million pounds sometime next month. We're actually running a contest to see who can guess the actual date that we hit it. And so that's been really fun. One of the statistics I really like is that we ask people to report their cleanings and the average amount of debris that's removed in one cleaning is less than 10 pounds.
(18:19):
So this is not a, we all went out for one weekend and picked everything up and then reported it as one big 10,000 pound cleaning, but rather it's a lot of people doing a lot of little cleanings and making a difference just a little bit at a time.
(18:38):
And I think that makes it a lot more accessible that it can be something that you just add into your day-to-day life. Again, our participants on average report five to eight times that they've done cleanings, and that includes people that joined a month ago, so haven't been part of the program very long. So we've seen people stay with the program for years. We send out yard signs to people that participate that says, "We protect the Mississippi River," or, "We protect Lake Superior," for the people up in Duluth."
(19:08):
And we'll get people saying, "I've had my sign for three years and now it's finally falling apart. Can I get a new one?" And it's just kind of nice to see people that have been with a program for a long time and really engaged with it and sticking with it.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Right. And I can add a little bit to that around picking up just small amounts of debris. The challenges are in our industry and some of the things we do with edge of field practices and even on our more stormwater commercial side of our business where we provide, at Princeco, we convey, we store, we treat storm water. And so a lot of the stormwater we can convey, we get to a point where before we store it in either a stormwater pond or in products we manufacture that can store it under parking lots, there always is a treatment device.
(20:01):
And those treatment devices work really good unless they're full. And so a lot of times if storm drains at the very beginning are not managed, that debris, whether it's leaves or cigarette butts or pop cans or styrofoam cups, whatever it might be, if they get into the storm sewer system, they're going to get to that water quality unit.
(20:27):
And once that water quality treatment device is whatever it might be, a product we make or somebody else, once that has too much debris in it can't work anymore. So the opportunity to go out and clean a drain and there's not much there and you feel like, "Well, that wasn't necessarily that rewarding because I only took a couple of pounds of something out of there," that is actually quite doing a lot of work and a lot of good because of what's happening downstream, and the fact that we're keeping those water quality units and treatment devices available to do their job. So I just want to share that as I can see the whole path here and how it works.
(21:16):
So engaging people seems like something you kind of have to do almost every day to keep the momentum and keep. How do you, Sophie, in your role being based in Minneapolis, St. Paul, is there ways you can engage your constituents and people that are interested in the middle of the winter?
Sophie Wicklund (21:37):
That's a great question. Yeah, we have a variety of different outreach strategies that we use with our participants, and yeah, it does change throughout the year. And in the winter, I think road salt has become a really big issue. And among our partners and among our participants, people are starting to think about it a lot more because if road salt gets into the water, it pollutes it, forever basically.
(22:08):
And using lower amounts of salt or using alternatives and generally people are using more salt than is necessary. And so there's a lot, I think, that we can tap into because we have this really engaged participant base. And so I think right now, we're kind of experimenting with what other sorts of messages could we use this space of people that we have to be champions on, yeah.
(22:42):
So that's been a recent thing in the winter, but also ice and snow covering the drains and flooding because of that has been an issue too. And so having those people who think their boots on the ground, they can respond really quickly. They don't have to wait for the city to come and address their entire neighborhood. I think people take a lot of pride in being able to do that.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And another thing, reason I wanted adopt a drain on the podcast is, again, I started with that, but we do similar things. The water table is really focused on agricultural water quality. We do things like edge of field practices in which we have buffer strips. We have wood chip bioreactors. We have controlled drainage structures, and all of those things are holding water back from getting too quickly to the river and stream.
(23:43):
In our case, it's allowing the crop to use that nitrogen rather than running it out into the stream and river. In your case, if the water goes too fast, it takes some things that we don't want it to take with it leaves in debris. So we're doing the same thing. And I think the water table was originally inspired because we weren't able to get our message out to our city cousins, and they don't necessarily have things and they don't necessarily have a big connection to the farm or to what we're doing, but they do have an opinion, we all do.
(24:20):
And so the opinion that our agriculture and our rural Americans that are part of our industry have, I wanted them to get the perspective and hear the perspective of what you guys are doing with Adopt-a-Drain because it's very similar. And I would hope that our city cousins would understand a little bit, maybe dig into the water table a little bit more and see what we're doing from the same perspective of we all have the same goal of clean water and maybe there's opportunities for us to do some things together with some education on different newsletters and things like that, that maybe you guys are sending out about, here's just another thing to think about.
(25:02):
So I really appreciate the conversation. It's been very interesting. Again, I kind of brushed over the different areas you're working, but if you could just share, we talked a lot about Minneapolis, kind of your number one market, [inaudible 00:25:19], St. Paul, but what other areas of the country feel like you're making good progress in?
Ann Zawistoski (25:27):
Yeah, we have a huge group of cities in Washington State. So started around the Puget Sound area, lots of great engagement there. We're working with Seattle amongst other cities there, and now it's starting to move into the rest of Washington State. And they've got a little bit like Minnesota where you have some very urban areas and then you've got some very rural areas. And so we started working with some of the counties out in Eastern Washington that are much more rural, but still have cities that have storm drains and also in Southern Washington.
(26:04):
And then got a few cities in California that we're working on there. There's a lot of really big rain events and flooding are big ones. We work with a group in the New Orleans area that, again, flooding is just a huge problem there. And then kind of all around, back up the East Coast, great cities in New Jersey.
(26:29):
And that's all of our cities there are quite small, but they're all just like one right next to the other. And so again, they've got a lot going on, but it's been really fun. Like Sophie was saying, different places having different needs. Vermont was also one of our early partners in doing this. So yeah, we're having fun.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Yeah. There's a lot of opportunities in some of the places you've talked about. There's a lot of technology that is coming out from places like Washington State, from New Jersey, from areas I think that are inspired by the Puget Sound, inspired by the Chesapeake Bay, inspired by areas that have passionate people about protecting their local resource and to be able to tap into those and be able to understand what my part is in this whole thing is great and exciting.
(27:29):
So thank you guys a lot for joining me today on The Water Table. I hope that this episode can help other people be inspired about their part in cleaning water and how they can either adopt a drain or if they're a farmer of the other things they can do on their edge of field practices to create better water quality, so appreciate it.
Ann Zawistoski (27:50):
Wonderful. Thank you so much for having us. This is great.
Sophie Wicklund (27:51):
Yeah, thank you.
