Yellow Breeches Watershed Association Annual Community Meeting

Yellow Breeches Watershed Association Annual Community Meeting
Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Lower Allen Park Community Barn 

Informal Gathering 6-7pm, Meeting 7pm

I would like to invite you to the annual membership meeting of the Yellow Breeches Watershed Association.
 

The YBWA would love to have your thoughts and ideas on how best to preserve and enhance the quality of the Yellow Breeches Creek.

Some of our accomplishments and ongoing projects include:

Trout Day-opening day of trout season   

Mechanicsburg Earth Day Festival- educational information display

Water quality monitoring -partnering each week with our friends and volunteers from the Capital Area Senior Environmental Corps

Water Trail Maps- providing helpful information for recreational users

Kiosks- located at the beginning of each water trail segment

Stream side clean up-2010 YB in Lisburn

We plan to continue all of the activities from past years.
In addition, we hope to expand our scope and transform this small organization into a more inclusive, proactive group of community volunteers.

We plan to have our 1st annual "publicly announced" community creek clean up in 2011.

While the event is still in the planning stages, I envision several versions- 

A "Walk Your Run" day, where communities would walk the waterways (drainage areas, ravines, anywhere that water runs during a rain event) in their neighborhoods.

This could be a trash clean up as well as an inventory of the condition of our natural drainage areas.  This could help us identify areas that need additional buffer plantings and natural filters for the storm water before it flows into the Yellow Breeches.

An "Adopt-A-Creek" Day, where we hope to engage different groups to clean up a segment of the creek each year.

For instance, I hope to engage Messiah College students to adopt the creek segment from the college to Simpson Park; and a different group to adopt the segment from Simpson Park to McCormick Park, McCormick Park to Lower Allen Park, etc.

We hope to start this program in the Upper and Lower Allen township areas.  The townships are already on board to provide announcements and assist with debris removal. 

We look forward to making this a community day of caring for the natural areas in your neighborhood.

With a few sponsors, we could have proper equipment, tee shirts, lunch, etc. for all of the volunteers.

We want to plan and plant several riparian buffers of native species plantings in the coming year. 

We would like to conduct educational workshops focusing on slowing storm water runoff. With our "Slow the Flow" workshop, we hope to increase the use of rain barrels and rain gardens in our watershed.

If you are interested and love the Yellow Breeches as much as I do, then please become involved. The possibilities are up to us.

Please come to the meeting or feel free to email me.  If you see an activity that you are interested in, I encourage you sign up to be a worker or leader for that project.

We have an informal social gathering planned for this Wednesday, Oct 13th from 6-7pm at the Lower Allen Park Community Barn, followed by a brief presentation about the low-head dams in our area. 

Please feel free to share this email with anyone that might be interested in the Yellow Breeches!

Hope to see you there.

Debbie Goetz

YBWA Vice-President 

Deborah Perry Goetz
dgoetz@comcast.net
Home 717-697-4734
Fax 717-697-4734
Cell 717-514-4288