GROWING VOLUNTEER ENGAGEMENT FOR DOWNRIVER MONTIORING
Through New Recruitment Strategies and Working Partnerships

HRWC’s watershed planning associate, Andrea Paine, with volunteers at a Downriver monitoring site.

A special excerpt on HRWC’s Chemistry and Flow Monitoring Program from our Report to the Community 2018-2019, Working with Impact. Thank you to the 35 volunteers who helped us expand this program last year and to the Alliance of Downriver Watersheds and the Downriver Utility Wastewater Authority for program support. We are currently seeking volunteers for the 2020 field season.

As part of our collaborative stormwater management efforts, HRWC provides water chemistry and flow monitoring coordination services for the Alliance of Downriver Watersheds. During this past monitoring season, we not only revamped our volunteer recruitment strategies but also launched a new lab partnership. The result was a strong increase in volunteer engagement among Downriver residents.

In late March, HRWC held the first Downriver-focused monitoring orientation in the city of Riverview. This event attracted more than 40 individuals from the Downriver area who were eager to learn more about watershed volunteer opportunities. The fact that so many people were drawn to the event was due in large part to a hard-working promotional campaign that included press releases and social media announcements along with active support from municipal partners in Wayne County. In addition to the scaled-up publicity, HRWC forged a new partnership with the Downriver Utility Wastewater Authority in Wyandotte, which is much closer to a majority of the program monitoring sites. Since the previous lab for this project was located in Ypsilanti, the new partnership makes site access easier—and more appealing—for volunteers from the Downriver community. These converging improvements to our 2019 recruitment efforts produced a robust cohort for the Wayne County monitoring program and a successful season of sample collection.

UPCOMING:

Volunteer for our Chemistry and Flow Monitoring Program! Head outdoors while measuring the quality of local rivers and streams during spring and summer. Learn how to collect water samples, measure stream flow, and record water chemistry measurements. No prior experience needed. Join one of our upcoming trainings: March 21 in Ann Arbor OR March 28 in Riverview.