Watershed Protection River Community Education Natural History Conservation Wetland Restoration Water Quality Protection Partnerships Diversity Non-Profit Kansas 412 East 9th Street, Lawrence 66044 phone 785-840-0700

The “Balancing Water Quality and Smart Growth Goals Toolkit” CD-ROM is a compilation of valuable resources and ideas, including a new webcast called Protecting Water Quality While Meeting Smart Growth Goals. The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) has brought these resources together to help local government managers and planning and environmental professionals determine how they can connect their efforts to reach important community goals. On LGEAN Site

The CD-ROM toolkit includes more than 50 resources, including webcasts, presentations, fact sheets, publications, case studies, and Web links to online resource collections and news articles and sources. To download toolkit’s content list, click the “For more information” link below.

To order your free copy of the CD-ROM, send a request by email to lgean@icma.org. Be sure to include your name, mailing address, and phone number. Please reference the “Balancing Water Quality and Smart Growth Toolkit” in your subject line.

For more information Contact: lgean@icma.org

What’s New keeps local government officials abreast of current environmental funding opportunities, federal policy updates, important legislative activities, new reports and publications, and other available tools and resources.

Spring in Kansas is notoriously unpredictable - the variability is part of what we love about it here but geez, winter just doesn’t want to let go. It’s starting to impact our field season. The Wetland Learners event scheduled for last Friday had to be postponed.

We’re still all systems go for Lawrence’s Rain Shower’s to Water Towers event tomorrow but I’m definitely going with the layered look.

Wild Birds Unlimited in Shawnee, Kansas, has stocked up on copies of Exploring the Kaw Valley. These are now officially out of print so catch ‘em while you can! As many of you will recall this book, authored by Lynn Byczynski and dedicated to KVHA’s founder Joyce Wolf, has a series of annotated driving loops of natural and cultural interests in the Kansas River Valley.

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The last event in the Westport to Wakarusa Poetry series is set to take place next Thursday, 4/24, at the Haskell Cultural Center and Museum at the Haskell Indian Nations University 7 to 9 pm. Smokey McKinney and Ken Lassman will be sharing some of their writing and insights. The poetry series is a KVHA Partner Project with the Lawrence Poetry Community.

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Wednesday Twitter-ish

Site visit to Baker Wetland, the rails-to-trails stormwater retention wetland, and Edgewood Park (not a wetland but some darn pretty soil with a stream and a grove of trees). Lots of turtles, frogs, birds, ducks, & every one of them has an attitude right now!

Wetland Wednesdays -Alison Reber

With help from the Roger Hill Volunteer Center and the Youth Volunteer Council, students enrolled in the CJHS EDGE Program have spent the last 2 Wednesdays working on wetland projects.

Last week they helped finish about 125 Wetland Learners booklets. It was slow going but we had a wonderful time visiting about the life of a junior high student. They had a good time relaying the Art for the Sky / Regal fritillary project experience.

Also, my daughter Tabitha came along to get a smidge-a-bit of the Central experience. One of the students, Sam, gave us a grand tour of my old alma mater. I’m not sure if she believed me when I said my sister, my mother and both my grandmothers had also gone to school there. (I’m only a little heart-sick that Tabby’s hell-bent on going to West where her Daddy and Uncle Rich and my father - her grandfather went to school.)

Yesterday we first went to Baker Wetland to walk through the boardwalk so they could get the feel for what the Wetland Learners would do with the booklets. Then, surprise of surprises! We got to where Rex usually does his macroinvertebrate gig and Sam goes: “I came out here with my class last year and there was this guy in the water and we had to get in and find BUGS!” I prompted, “Like what?” and she said “Like frogs and tadpoles, and beetles and stuff…” A little sketchy but we’ll take it - Congratulations - our first documented Wetland Learners play-it-forward peer-to-peer teaching. I so love it when that happens. sigh.

Next we went over to the stormwater retention area south of Douglas County Works east of Haskell University, adjacent to the Rails to Trails trail. We trekked down to the wetland area and up the berm so we could look down and across the basin (sometimes 2-dimensional words are too pale for this 3-dimensional world). The kids were surprised because it’s not like anybody guess there’s a squiggly channel of water on the other side of what appears to be a mound of mud with some tree seedlings here and there. However, it wasn’t the frogs, or the turtles, ducks, mud, etc… that really grabbed their attention. It was the cows. Just beyond the retention area, there was a pasture with a handful of cows grubbing down on what looked like absolutely divine grass. The stormy sky was undercut by late afternoon sunlight; the grass looked like cake icing green.

We walked a bit farther down the trail so I could show them the backside of a new building/walled parking area - something… The important thing was to show them the water leaving the wetland area becomes a stream but then dwindles back to a wetland and then merges with another drainage ditch to be a stream again, etc… Wetlands and streams aren’t mutally exclusive. The other big thing was to point out the soil where the construction took place. Its a nasty yellow brown. Trash in streams is visually disturbing but the sediment in the stream is smothering. My mini-monologue was disrupted by a chorus frog jumping from said sediment filled puddle to another puddle. The possum footprint didn’t help my case either. I think they more or less got the dirt on dirt - it’s all dirt, baby! Soils age and change. That’s important because when we’re talking about wetland restoration and wetland construction the soils dictate everything.

The kids took some pictures - check them out over at flickr but be patient - I haven’t cleaned them up at all yet. Enjoy….

April Foolin’ by Alison Reber

Alright alright…. I’ve got the website looking a bit more respectable. In fact, I’m actually pretty darn pleased! I love this new template - I haven’t had to do any hard-code tinkering and the “plugins” are actually working the way they’re supposed to.

The calendar is back together and I’ve got an interactive map up and running. There’s a forum now but I can’t figure out how to make a post so it might be a bit before we can start to communicate that way. I don’t have the Dragonfly Messenger rss back in place but that’s **simple**.

Keep an eye out for a listing of field event dates!

Greetings from yet another template… by Alison Reber

A number of years ago I had a tramatic web experience. It was lunchtime and I was breezing through some files trying to eliminate duplicate materials and consolidate hard drives. By the time the rest of the gang got back I’d unwittingly deleted the entire StreamLink website.

Wordpress.com has given me a pretty unbreakable way to develop a website content management system. However, the unbreakable part also has meant limiting our interactive bells and whistles. Recently I finally decided to bite the bullet and migrated kvha.wordpress.com to a private hosting service.

It has not been as smooth as it might be for most people. In the course of adding said bells and whistles, I managed to delete the “template” I’d customized for our website.

The short of the long is the nice folks at HostMySite.com have poured the content into the default template. There are a few more snargles to deal with before I can put the customized template back….

(PS all you former interns can stop snickering!!)

Odds & ends from the last few days… -Alison Reber

Friday 3/28/08 Bob and I attended KU’s Hall Center for Humanities Annual Oral History Workshop (Learning to Hear the Stories IX)

This year’s theme, “Beyond These Hallowed Halls—Educating America”, encourages us to take a critical look at the connection between our past and our future as we turn to projects in individual and group history that have had a significant impact upon our public memory. (sound familiar?…)

There were several old friends in the mix - Mike Watowa & Gloria Throne from the Kansas Folklore Society. Ruth Turney, Pat Kehde, and Burdett Loomis were also in the mix.

[Read more →]

From Johnson County, Kansas Homepage January 2008
Funding for construction of a Riverfront Park overlooking the Kansas River in De Soto was approved Thursday, January 24, by the Johnson County Board of Commissioners.

The Board authorized $56,685 from the county’s Stream Maintenance Fund for public improvements in connection with the new park. Vote to approve the funding request was unanimous by the Board.

The Stream Maintenance Fund receives royalty payments from sand removed from the Kansas River as it flows through Johnson County. The funds can be used for the cleaning and maintenance of the river upon approval of the Kansas Division of Water Resources and for development of public park lands along tributaries of and along the Kansas River.

The fund was last used in 1996 and 1997 by the Johnson County Park and Recreation District to construct a boat ramp near Cedar Creek.

Thursday’s funding authorization by the Board will be used by the city of De Soto to help finance phase one of its 50-acre Riverfront Park located along the banks of the river with a connection at Ottawa Street. The site of the park is on property of the former commercial sand dredging business operated by the Kaw Sand Company in the 1990s.

De Soto’s concept plan of the park includes a stage for festivals, concerts, and other attractions; hiking and biking trails; an informational kiosk or monument with De Soto history; picnic shelters; playground equipment, including a disc-golf course and sand volleyball area; parking areas, including a site for recreational vehicles; public bathrooms; and shower facilities for campers and RV users.

The first phase of the project now is under way, including site clearing and rough grading for the regional festival and concert viewing area to accommodate up to 2,500 visitors. That work is expected to be completed by mid-February.

Construction of a performing stage overlooking the Kansas River, grass seeding, and final grading work will start in March with completion by early summer. The first concert in the new Riverfront Park is scheduled October 11, featuring a Blues and Barbecue Festival.

Other work in the first phase, with an estimated cost of $700,000, will involve construction of the loop drive snaking through the park, public parking areas, a storm water system, and potable water system along with installation of electrical service and an irrigation pump to provide water from the river to irrigate grass, trees, and plantings at the park.

The project, which is the first Johnson County park along the banks of the Kansas River, is being developed in five phases by the city over five years with a final estimated cost of $3.5 million.

Funds for new Riverfront Park in De Soto authorized

Project Updates:~> Kaw Valley Voices - The interviews were recorded and transcribed between 1996 and 2003. A traveling display was developed and used during KVHA’s ‘96 Rollin’ Down the River Festival. We’re ready to digitally produce the materials.

~> River Roots series - Catfish Cookies was published as an extension of Kaw Valley Voices with the intention of publishing additional books that blend creative writing short stories with river centered environmental history.

~> Poetry Series - In January we launched a series of poetry readings and discussions to look at environmental futures from a past, present, and future perspective. The readings are being video and audio recorded.~> Wetland Learners video - We’re also working on producing a short video to document Wetland Learners next spring.

~> Special Summer Event - Junish? The idea is to have a showing of the video and to showcase some of the other projects that have happened this year. This is intended to be a fundraising celebration - maybe some kind of an auction, music, some food…

~> River of Words - Next fall we should be ready to introduce a homespun version of the River of Words program as a Wetland Learners extension.

~> Wings Over the Wakarusa - With any luck we’ll be able to incorporate some of the above in a second River Roots book called “Wings Over the Wakarusa”. Ideally we’ll be ready to go to print in September so it’s ready for Christmas ‘08.

By remembering the past we can envision our future.

Our understanding of common experiences is anchored in history and culture. When we creatively interact with the environment, we’re also building a sense for how the world should be. If people are able to find common ground, a shared vision for the future becomes within the realm of possible.

Over the years KVHA has interwoven humanities-based principles with our grant-based programs.

We need help gathering the resources to make these things happen.

What you can do:

1 - Help us find compatible partner projects or potential collaborators.

2 - Share your talents and/or volunteer your abilities.

3 - Make a financial contribution.

The 2nd event in our 3 part poetry series will be Thursday, February 28th at the Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union from 7 to 9. The Oread Bookstore is hosting the event.

Local poets Elizabeth Schultz, Denise Low, and Dennis Etzel will share their poetry and thoughts on our place in the natural world. Please join us for a reading and discussion.

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