[music playing] ANNOUNCER 1: The following program is a production of Ozarks Public Television.

Good evening, and welcome to "Sense of Community."

I'm Michelle Skalicky.

The Watershed Committee of the Ozarks was established nearly four decades ago to protect the area's watersheds.

Our guest tonight is the Executive Director of the organization.

Mike Kromrey will talk about the mission of WCO as well as the educational and recreational opportunities at the Watershed Center of the Ozarks at Valley Water Mill Park.

Stay with us.

[music playing] ANNOUNCER 2: Welcome to "Sense of Community."

"Sense of Community" is a public affairs presentation of the Ozarks Public Television.

Good evening, and welcome to "Sense of Community."

Thanks for joining us this evening.

Thanks, Michele.

Glad to be here.

Well, I want to start first by talking about the Watershed Community of the Ozarks.

Give us some history of your organization and why it was initially started.

MIKE KROMREY: Sure.

So the Watershed Committee the Ozarks started in 1984, and it really developed out of a problem the community had.

As we were growing and developing, particularly around the Fellows Lake area, the water quality went bad.

We had a series of what's called taste and odor issues.

People were-- their drinking water smelled funny, and it was worrisome and very impactful, so the community leaders got together and said, what are we going to do about this?

And one of the solutions that has endured to this day was forming the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks, and it is our mission to keep the water clean since then.

What watersheds are the Springfield area located in?

I understand there's some small ones and then some larger ones.

MIKE KROMREY: Sure.

So watershed-- I find that people sometimes don't really know what that means.

So first of all, a watershed is synonymous with a basin, but it's just an area of land that drains to a body of water.

So that can be really big.

An example is the Mississippi River.

It drains the whole Midwest.

But here in Springfield, in downtown, an example of a small watershed would be Jordan Creek.

Jordan Creek flows into Wilson's Creek and then the James River, so you could also consider much of Springfield in the James River Watershed, and so, therefore, Table Rock Lake as well.

Interestingly, right around Carney Street on the north side of town is a pretty different watershed.

That's the Sauk River Watershed.

So the water from that north side of town drains through the Sauk system and up to Stockton.

So you could also say Springfield's in the Stockton system or Stockton Watershed.

And it's funny to think about, if you were a fish, you'd be separated by hundreds of miles by water if you were in South Springfield and North Springfield.

You'd have to swim through Lake of the Ozarks and out into the Missouri River and all the way back through Arkansas to get to your buddy on the south side.

MICHELE SKALICKY: Wow.

Anyway.

Enough about watersheds.

But it's important because the health of our waterways is exactly the same as the health of the landscape.

Most of the water that we drink and that's in our rivers is coming from our city, our farms, our backyards.

What are the main pollutants that go into our waterways from a watersheds?

People often would say trash or something toxic, but really, in America, by and large, the three main pollutants that we're concerned about are sediment from erosion, so dirt in the water.

Also, bacteria.

Like, E. coli, for example.

And then nutrients-- nitrogen and phosphorus.

And those are coming sometimes from sediment from erosion.

Sometimes from fertilizer.

Sometimes from human or animal waste.

What responsibility do we have as citizens of this area to help protect watersheds and the waterways around this region?

That's a great question because really we all have things we can do to be stewards of water.

We all need clean water.

So I think it's a good idea, first of all, to know where your water is coming from.

Maybe you're a person listening that's on a private well.

If you're on a private well, one of the best things you can do is make sure your septic system is maintained.

And if you live in the urban environment, it's a good idea to think about, how can I reduce impervious surface?

That just means-- like your rooftop and your driveway, that's impervious.

Water can't soak through.

Maybe you can divert your downspouts into a rain garden or into the yard.

Maybe you can do things in your home to conserve water.

Water conservation is a really big deal.

The toilet is the thing in the American home that uses the most water, so you can get a huge water conservation bang for your buck by replacing an old toilet, and there are even some rebates available here in Springfield from City Utilities to do things like that.

MICHELE SKALICKY: OK. And the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks used to be located downtown on Main Street, and then you moved to this beautiful new facility at Valley Water Mill Park in North Springfield.

Give us some background on how the Watershed Center of the Ozarks came to be.

So the Watershed Center was a dream of our former Director Loring Bullard and his board and some friends.

We wanted a place to really showcase our mission and teach about water.

We wanted a place where local youth could literally get in the water and learn about waterways that way.

And so after a long capital campaign and a lot of design-- and interestingly, this was one of the first green design projects in the area, and there weren't any local architects at that time specializing in green design-- they found an architect in Kansas City.

And after many, many meetings and planning events and fundraising, they produced the Watershed Center.

But the Watershed Center is so cool because it is sort of a microcosm of the Ozarks.

We have, on the site, which is about 100 acres, a spring and several sinkholes and caves.

We have a stream and ponds, and it's a wonderful place to do experiential place-based education for particularly community youth but people of all ages.

What sorts of educational opportunities are available at the Watershed Center?

So we have a wide variety.

For example, if you just want to come out and walk with your dog, you can read our interpretive signs and learn about the place sort of passively.

People who are in school programs, we actually, on our website, have a place where you can sign up, and we're going to interview you to make sure that whatever experience you have aligns with the curriculum that you need.

And much of the Springfield Public School's curriculum is actually written around or with the Watershed Center so that it's more than just a one-off experience.

It's bookended, as we say.

It's a culminating event in their school learning.

Can anyone schedule a field trip?

An organization?

Does it have to be a school group?

No, no.

We do events for lots of civic organizations, and sometimes it's just some coaching on how they might best enjoy the place.

Sometimes people would like a more in-depth sort of an interpreter to welcome them and show them around or even-- Missouri Stream Team, for example, is out today getting their stream team certification.

All right.

Do you do a lot of the Stream Team, a lot of Stream Team work at the Watershed Center?

We really do, primarily from a training perspective.

So if listeners don't know what the Stream Team is, it's essentially citizen science, and you're using the living creatures in the stream to tell you how healthy it is.

So volunteers get to become certified for data quality, and they are taught how to identify aquatic insects and take all the physical samples required, and then even given equipment.

And so we do a version of that with almost every field trip because, even if we're not actually collecting data, the fundamentals of that are very important, which is the stream can tell us how healthy it is by what's living there.

And who can get involved in Stream Teams?

And if they would like to do that, how can they find out more?

They actually have a great website-- Missouri Stream Team.

The Missouri Department of Conservation and Department of Natural Resources have helped shepherd that program for a long time.

Yeah.

If you are a single volunteer, you can connect with the workshop to become certified, and that's all on their website.

OK. And I want to talk about something that you have going there that I think is really neat.

It's the Watershed Conservation Corps.

Talk about that.

Who can get involved in that?

I know that you employ some young people through a grant each year.

And talk about what the Corps does.

Sure.

So I should share just for a second how it formed.

We saw two things.

One was a real need to find a bridge for young people between college and career, especially in natural resources.

And we also saw a need in our community to maintain green infrastructures.

So that would be things like detention basins that have native plants in them or rain gardens.

Around town there are some prairie restoration projects.

There are even businesses, like Bass Pro Shops, in their base camp that are trying to achieve a more natural Missouri landscape.

And so the gap there was, there weren't really any companies that were specialized in Missouri nature, and so we decided to create one.

And one of the sort of secrets to that program is we have made it sustainable because what we're doing with that program is fee-for-service work, so we have clients.

We're working for the Park Service.

We're working for the Forest Service.

We're working for local businesses, and that revenue is what makes those programs sustainable for the long term.

So it is an excellent opportunity for our Watershed Conservation Corps members.

They can gain training and certifications, experience, and a lot of connections with all of these different partners that we work with, so it's a very robust, hands-on learning experience and very impactful for our community.

MICHELE SKALICKY: I was going to say.

Are there any other places besides the Bass Pro Bass Camp that we can see examples of what the Watershed Conservation Corps has done?

MIKE KROMREY: Yeah.

Well, they've done a lot of work at the Watershed Center in helping us with our Forest Management Plan which the Missouri Department of Conservation provided for us.

The Discovery Center has some native plantings.

So does the Community Foundation the Ozarks downtown.

We have worked at several other local businesses.

And then, other places would be harder to really know what we've done, but we've done a lot of trail work in Mark Twain National Forest, for example, fixing areas in the trail that were pretty rough or eroded, and the Buffalo National River.

It's a great opportunity for young people who want to go into conservation to get that experience that will hopefully lead to a job then after they graduate college.

MIKE KROMREY: Yeah.

Our job placement is very high for our Corps members, and the experience is pretty rich and robust.

I think it's really good to start by doing, to learn by doing, and then maybe you stick with that part in your career, or maybe it's just something you draw from later.

MICHELE SKALICKY: Yeah.

Maybe incorporate those practices on your own property.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I want to-- you mentioned native plants.

You've got the Watershed Natives Program, and it's described on your website as a significant part of your education effort.

Talk about the program and how it works with local high school students.

Sure.

So native plants have a great water quality connection because those three types of pollution that I mentioned-- sediment and nutrients and bacteria-- native plants can help us address all of those.

And we're dreaming about a future where there's a lot less mowed fescue and a lot more native plants.

A lot more prairies or woodlands.

And so at Hillcrest High School, we have a program.

It's a College and Career Pathway Program, so it's three years.

The students start out through the science lens learning about growing plants and plants and plant science.

I think probably everyone listening has had classes like that in their school career.

But imagine doing those classes and actually planting native plants and looking at seed germination and then growing those.

And then, the third year of that program, the capstone is, it's called Restoration Ecology.

That means the students get to use the plants that they've grown over the last few years and put them in green infrastructure projects.

They get to design those projects, and they get to work with conservation professionals to critique their designs.

And then, some of the best designs are even selected to implement.

So they can literally start with planting seeds all the way through green infrastructure installation in their community.

That must be pretty neat for a high school student to be able to see something that they've helped create.

Can you point to an example of where we might see something that they've done?

So this is the first third year of the program, and they are planning to do some of what I just mentioned at the fairgrounds near where they're growing the plants, which is right next door to Hillcrest High School.

So their first program should-- their first planting, their first project, should be going in the ground this spring.

You've got a nursery at the fairgrounds.

Talk about that and also about the native plant sales that you offer.

MIKE KROMREY: Sure.

So we talked about trying to run sustainable programs with the Watershed Conservation Corps.

This whole program is designed to be assisted with the help of plant sales to pay for our staff and to keep this program going.

So maybe you've, at one point, bought a tomato plant or a chrysanthemum from an FFA.

This is kind of the same thing with native plants.

And so if folks would like to join us for some native plant sales and help the Hillcrest High School program and Watershed Natives, we have a whole list of those throughout the spring.

Many of them are at local breweries.

And you can find that list on our website, which is watershedcommittee.org under Watershed Natives And here in the city, if you're living in the city, and you are thinking about planting natives, what benefits would that provide for you and for wildlife in the area?

Well, maybe I can just share one of my favorite examples.

We have, at the Watershed Center, a plant called New England aster and aromatic aster.

They look a lot like chrysanthemums that everybody buys in the fall.

If you put a mum next to a Missouri native aster, the native aster will be buzzing with 10 or 15 different species of pollinators, and there will be zero pollinators on the mum.

So that's just one species.

Most people know about monarch butterflies and their need for their host plant milkweed, but there are many, many other reactions or interdependencies in nature.

Oak trees, for example, have like a thousand species that are associated with the oak, whether it's in the canopy or the decaying leaves.

And so, yeah, you just can't underscore or underrate the importance of native plants for wildlife.

Wow.

It sounds like oak trees are pretty special.

MIKE KROMREY: They really are.

And besides all that, all the programs that we've already talked about, you have taken over the marina at Fellows Lake.

How did that come about, and what do you offer out there?

How's it going?

MIKE KROMREY: So yeah.

We are currently leasing from City Utilities the dock, the store, and that part of Fellows Lake which is called Miller Park.

And the reason we wanted to have a presence out there is like we talked about in the beginning.

Watershed Committee of the Ozarks was formed out of concern for Fellows Lake.

And we figured that a presence out there would allow us to really pass on stewardship information to Fellows Lake users.

And it's important because there's more and more users now.

There's over 20 miles of beautiful trail out there.

A lot of mountain bikers and joggers and nature hikers are coming out there all the time.

You still have a strong fishing community.

And the sailing community is really becoming reinvigorated thanks to our manager out there.

There's a Springfield Sailing Club.

And so it just made sense for us to be a part of the growth of the Fellows Lake area, particularly because as we use it more, we need to pay more attention to taking care of it.

MICHELE SKALICKY: Yeah.

What can you do out there?

I know that it's restricted recreation because it is a drinking water-- it's the main drinking water source, from what I understand, for Springfield.

What can you do out there?

What's allowed?

You can pretty much do everything but swimming.

So swimming is not allowed, obviously, because it's their drinking water.

But you can mountain bike.

You can jog.

You can hike.

You can paddle a kayak.

You can rent one from us.

You can also rent a fishing boat or a pontoon boat.

Fishing is huge out there, but sailing is up and coming.

Folks like to play Frisbee.

There are pavilions where folks do family reunions and Saturday afternoon picnics, and it is really the silent sports mecca for Springfield.

It's the quiet destination for recreation.

It does seem like whenever I go out there anymore, there's more and more people.

It's kind of a hidden gem that's being discovered.

MIKE KROMREY: Well said.

The Watershed Committee has also teamed up with City Utilities on a groundwater monitoring program.

Talk about that and how often you check and what you're looking for.

MIKE KROMREY: Yeah.

For many years, we have generally, about quarterly, checked a lot of the major springs in the area.

Also, some years ago, we helped drill a couple of monitoring wells at the Watershed Center.

And the interesting part about those wells are one, they're both real-time monitored, and it's part of the US Geological Survey network, so you can actually get satellite uplink readings.

But one checks the upper aquifer, and one checks the lower aquifer.

Folks don't often know, but we do have two separate aquifer layers beneath us in the Springfield area.

The Springfield aquifer is the more shallow one, and the Ozark aquifer is the deeper one.

And so what are you looking for?

Are you looking for a certain bacteria, certain contaminants?

And talk about some of the results you've found.

MIKE KROMREY: Yeah.

So mostly we're looking for bacteria and nutrients, and you never want to drink spring water.

Almost always, you're going to find some level of bacteria, and that's normal.

Every once in a while we will come across something that raises our eyebrows, and that's why we want to be out there from time to time.

Another big reason is just creating that baseline data set to know what's normal for our area and see long-term trends.

What have we found?

I have seen instances where pollution events would come through a spring.

There was a case in the Clear Creek system, it's been some years ago now, but there was a substance that was causing iron bacteria to grow, so the whole spring area was this bright orange color.

And eventually, the thing causing that was traced to someone dumping in a sinkhole, and that was addressed.

But, yeah.

Most of the time, they're pretty good, pretty clean.

And you've talked about a bunch of different programs you've got out there.

The Watershed Natives, the Watershed Conservation Corps, and other things.

How can somebody get involved?

Do you rely on volunteers a lot to do a lot of this stuff?

MIKE KROMREY: Yeah, we do.

Our board, our volunteers, our board members.

And we thrive because of volunteers in a lot of ways.

Watershed Natives is a great way for people to get plugged in.

So if somebody wanted to schedule an educational program or volunteer, our website is the clearinghouse for all that, and folks can get in touch with us through that.

What kind of jobs are available for a volunteer?

Well, with Natives, it's going to be planting plants and taking care of plants in a variety of ways.

And right now, building infrastructure for a growing nursery operation, so our volunteers have gotten to help put up a high tunnel and building boxes to rear young seedling stock trees in.

And we're actually going to be building a aquatic native plant section to our nursery too.

So all of those type of projects out at the Watershed Center, it's a park, and there's a lot of, I guess you could think of it as landscaping-related activities.

Picking up trash.

Mulching trails and trees and keeping the trail clear.

Those are pretty common.

We can almost always use help with that.

If somebody wants to find out more about the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks and the Watershed Center of the Ozarks, what number can they call?

What website can they visit?

Yeah.

I hope folks will visit watershedcommittee.org.

And you can always give us a call at 417-866-1127.

All right.

So I've been talking to Mike Kromrey, Executive Director of the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks.

Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Thank you, Michele.

And again, our guest was Mike Kromrey, Executive Director of the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks.

And if you'd like more information, go to watershedcommittee.org.

Thanks for joining us for "Sense of Community," and have a good evening.

[music playing] ANNOUNCER 2: Here is where you can find more information about the topics covered in this program.

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