Cullman County Holds 4th Annual Water Festival

by Johnny Grantham, Cullman County Soil and Water Conservation District, Cullman, AL

The Cullman Water Festival is an exciting community event that provides local students with the opportunity to discover the importance and diversity of water.

The Water Festival engages children in learning by bringing together the expertise of educators, water quality and quantity specialists, community volunteers, conservation groups, industry and government, in an interactive, fun setting. More than 1,100 Cullman County 4th grade students from city, county, and private schools attended the 5th Annual Water Festival held on the campus of Wallace State Community College in Hanceville.

The students were involved in three educational activities: watershed, water cycle, and aquifers. These activities helped them understand the importance of clean drinking water. They built a model watershed at the watershed activity. Then sprinkled different colors of Kool-aid on the terrain to represent contaminates. When they sprayed the area with water, representing rain, it was easy to see the "contaminated" colored water as it drained into to lake at the lower level of the watershed. This shows how drinking water gets polluted!

In the water cycle segment, students made bracelets with beads representing the chain of evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection.

In another activity, the students made edible aquifers. They used ice cream, gummy bears, soda and sprinkles to represent the aquifer and straws to simulate a pump. Each student and volunteer wore a Water Festival T-shirt. Raley Warner, a 4th grade student at St. Paul’s Lutheran School, designed this year’s T-shirt.

"Our goal is to teach children that they are capable of having real, long-lasting, positive impacts on water resources, and to equip them with the information they need to do that in a fun and engaging way," said Murray Griffin, NRCS District Conservationist.

This event is possible only because an incredible number of organizations volunteer time to pull it together. Staffs from the Cullman County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Cullman Natural Resources Conservation Service office were among the more than 100 volunteers who served as instructors and aides that made this a meaningful day for Cullman County fourth graders.

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