In honor of the United Nations’ World Water Day, the World Water Monitoring Challenge™ (WWMC) announced the recipients of the fourth annual Water Champion awards. The Water Champion awards recognize superior levels of relevance, educational effort, support, and innovation in the promotion of water quality through involvement in WWMC.
On March 22, 2013 the program honored the outstanding efforts of eight groups and four individual participants for outreach conducted in 2012 (under the World Water Monitoring Challenge banner). The award recipients for North America were from Florida!
Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Environmental Education (Group)
In 2012, The Office of Environmental Education set out to register the greatest number of sites and engage the most people in WWMC of any state in the US. In less than five months, Florida registered 210 sites and had 4,176 participants. The OEE served as the point of contact for the entire agency by promoting the challenge, suggesting outreach opportunities, providing kits and training, registering sites, and uploading data. The chief audience was middle school students throughout Florida, primarily from underserved schools. Click here to learn more.
Jackie Turner (Individual)
Turner is the Park Service Specialist at Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park (near Tallahassee, Florida). For the past six years, she’s led water quality monitoring events through 16-24 different water bodies in the park. Her day-long field experiences allow groups of 10-15 students, parents, and volunteers to experience the world-renowned hydrological features of Wakulla Springs. Turner's program involves monitoring one of the state's largest springs from a boat and exploring other park features, including sinkholes, springs, and a well from which participants test the groundwater. Click here to learn more.
See www.MonitorWater.org for more information. Click this link for the FDEP press release.
