Education and Outreach Committee

With Spring officially here, we will start to see significant snow melt and potentially heavy rain storms. These storm events provide us a reminder to protect water quality! Rain and melting snow pick up litter, pesticides, fertilizers, and other pollutants from our homes and carry them into storm inlets which drain directly into local waterways without treatment.This is different from wastewater systems, which carry water from indoor drains in our homes, offices, and buildings to wastewater treatment plants before discharging to the local waterway.

The Colorado Stormwater Councils shared Education and Outreach program includes social media, radio, TV, print, online and bus advertisements, and public service announcements. Thank you to all of our members and partners who make this possible through their contributions and collaboration. Without our combined effort, our communities would be much more limited on the number of different media options integrated into our education and outreach programs. This report is a summary of all educational campaigns for 2023. 

Winter weather brings with it deicer, salt, and sand application. This relates to our municipal operations as well as citizens within our municipalities. Here are some reminders for this season to help protect water quality.

Reminders for Municipal Staff:

The amount of phosphorus in grass clippings generated from just one lawn mowing can produce up to 100 lbs. of unwanted algae if it ends up in our lakes and ponds. Leaf “litter” and landscape trash account for 56% of the phosphorus in urban stormwater, in addition to clogging storm drains and increasing debris in our streams and waterways.

The Barr Lake and Milton Reservoir Watershed Association (BMW) in collaboration with the Colorado Stormwater Council (CSC) and the City and County of Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI), created a virtual bike tour for 2020.  The tour went ‘live’ and was posted to YouTube on June 23rd.   Registration was free for all participants.

There are cleaning instructions printed on most curbside trashcans (see image attached) that may be misleading so we are encouraging CSC members to adopt the following Residential and Commercial Tips to avoid encouraging residents to rinse their trash cans on the curbside as pollutants such as e-Coli, harsh cleaners, oils, etc may impact water quality.

Residential Tip:

The Colorado Stormwater Council has a FACEBOOK account! Please help us spread the word. Thank you to Heather Otterstetter with Westminster for creating the account and volunteering to administrate it. Please send any publishing requests to her directly.