Join us at the One Water Summit

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Submitted by Melissa Miller, Associate Director of the Iowa Water Center

The Iowa Water Center would like to invite you to mark your calendars for July 10-12 in the Twin Cities. What’s going on then? The One Water Summit, convened by the US Water Alliance.

The One Water Summit brings together a diverse network of water leaders from across the country for thought-provoking presentations, action-oriented panels, mobile tours, and unparalleled networking opportunities. One Water Summit 2018 is a unique venue to craft innovative solutions, connect with influential leaders across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and forge the alliances needed to advance integrated, equitable, and sustainable approaches to water resource management.

We are excited to be part of a core group of “team captains” encouraging our colleagues from Iowa to attend the summit as part of the Iowa delegation, coordinated by the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance.   The last two years, Iowa has led the largest delegation to the One Water Summit. This year, we hope to bring our largest, most diverse, and engaged delegation yet.

Our delegation is an effective way to facilitate peer exchange, knowledge building, and navigate multiple programming options at the Summit. As delegates, we have the opportunity to join peer-to-peer exchange sessions before, during, and after the Summit to collaborate and dive deeper on the thorny challenges and opportunities in sustainable water management.

All in all, it’s a great way to get more out of the Summit and advance our work locally. The Alliance offers a heavily discounted rate of $425 for One Water delegations (almost half off). Read more about the benefits of the delegations here.

If you’ve never been to the US Water Summit, don’t worry – neither have we! We are thrilled to take part in this event and hope to see our friends from our nationwide network of Water Resources Research Institutes, too. There’s much to be learned from each other (and shared with others) as we work toward better water management.

We hope you’ll consider joining the Iowa delegation as part of the Iowa Water Center team! For more information, including the discount code to register, contact Melissa Miller (millerms@iastate.edu).

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Melissa Miller is the associate director of the Iowa Water Center. She holds a B.S. in community and public health and M.S. in community development with a focus in natural resources management, both from Iowa State University.

Farmers Connect Conservation to Water Quality at Big Spring

Elkader, IA. – On August 10th, fifty farmers from the Upper Roberts and Silver Creek Watersheds enjoyed an evening of family fun at the Big Spring Trout Hatchery along the Turkey River near Elkader. The Second Annual Landowner Appreciation Day allowed farmers and their families to follow the path of water that drains from their land to where it reemerges at Big Spring.

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IWConf17 presentation applications are due (really) soon

If you’ve been putting off submitting an application to present at the 2017 Iowa Water Conference, put it off no longer – applications are due Sunday night (Aug 14) at 11:59 p.m. The IWConf17 planning committee will review in the weeks following as the “first cut” for determining the 2017 conference agenda.

(It’s okay if you wait until Sunday to submit. It’s not procrastination. You’re busy. It’s prioritization.)

Wondering if you should submit an application? Do you answer yes to any of the following questions?

-Do you have a story to tell about watershed successes?

-Are you looking for partners for a current or new project?

-Do you have the latest tool in your water management field with proven results?

-Have you figured out a way to engage new sectors of populations in water-related activities or conversations?

From the call for applications:

This year’s theme, “Watershed Management: Partnerships for Progress,” promotes water resource management from a watershed perspective, with a particular emphasis on the partnerships necessary to accomplish goals. Improving water management on a watershed scale is a complex undertaking due to the variety and sheer number of stakeholders. Watersheds do not adhere to political jurisdictions; they often cross borders of different cities of town, counties, and in some cases, states. The 11th Annual Iowa
Water Conference looks for presentations to tell stories of successes and lessons learned through forged partnerships while providing updates on the latest technical approaches to water management from a variety of perspectives.
One final thing to note – conference goers have requested to hear more stories of successful implementation- a translation of research/development into practice. They want to come away with an idea of how your presentation’s focus fits into their lives. The committee will be looking at applications through that lens this year.
Instructions for submitting are in the call for applications. As usual, if you have questions – let us know.

Mixing entrepreneurs with H2O for a solution

Earlier this year, IWC Director Rick Cruse and Associate Director Melissa Miller met with staff from the Agricultural Entrepreneurship Initiative (AEI) at Iowa State University about an exciting new event idea. AEI team members have spent the last several months working tirelessly to organize Water Innovation Challenge 2016, an open community creative event that will join students, industry experts, scientists, entrepreneurs and YOU to collaborate and co-create new ideas that change the way we think about, manage, and use water in our state.

Details:

Waterpalooza 2016
Sept 1 & 2 (must be present both days)
Scheman Building, Iowa State University campus, Ames
$50 registration (FREE for current students)
Over $15,000 awarded in prizes

The event is facilitated by Dr. Jeffrey Stamp, a professional creative and concept developer who was the inventor of the Frito-Lay Baked! Lays® Potato Crisps. Dr. Stamp is a native of Sheldon, Iowa and leads creative innovation sessions worldwide for corporations, universities, and start-ups.

We at IWC are delighted to promote this event that will equip a variety of stakeholder with entrepreneurial skills all while thinking big and sharing ideas that will creatively address water quality issues in Iowa.

For guidelines, event schedule, and registration information, please visit the event’s webpage. Questions can be directed to Amanda Blair at acblair@iastate.edu or 515.294.4945. This event is sponsored by the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.

Iowa Water Center seeks partners for community arts event

We’ve got something brewing over here at the Iowa Water Center, and we’re pretty excited about it.

This year is the tenth anniversary of the Iowa Water Conference (in its current form), so we thought we’d make it kind of special. The conference agenda (which will be released soon!) is particularly spectacular this year, but we can always do more.

The idea started off that we’d have Luther professors Jodi Enos-Berlage and Jane Hawley bring their Body of Water performance to Ames for conference goers to attend on the first night of the conference. This multimedia approach to water education seemed like a provocative addition to our two-day event, and we’ve had requests for several years to bring back an evening reception/activity for those attending from out of town. A lovely idea!

But then, we learned about a project that local Ames High School students are working on that also combines art and water education. The students within The Bluestem Institute at AHS are creating photo collages combined with text from interviews to define water quality terms from a technical, social and cultural perspective. They’ll be presenting during the Iowa Water Conference, but the work they’re doing is something to behold, so we didn’t want to limit it to conference attendees.

LIGHTBULB. Gallery session before the Body of Water performance. A community event, adjacent to the Iowa Water Conference, but not solely for paid attendees. Invite the community, far and wide.  These unique approaches to water outreach and education need to reach as many people as possible. Our state has some incredibly innovative environmental education efforts (Water Rocks!, anyone?), and it’s our job to display, disseminate, expose and otherwise facilitate learning. We at the Iowa Water Center are on a mission to better the state of water in the state of Iowa. Education and outreach are a big part of that.

But, we can’t do it alone. We want this evening event to be well-attended and free of charge to patrons. So we’re asking for partners – be it financial sponsors, connectors, marketers – whatever you can do to help make this happen, we want to talk to you. If you are interested in learning more or helping us brainstorm, contact us. We can’t wait to talk with you!