NYCDEP Water Resources Art & Poetry Contest

Courtesy of NYCDEP.

Hey teachers, students, and homeschoolers, March 1 is the deadline for the NYC Department of Environmental Protection’s 2014 Water Resources Art and Poetry Contest! Students (second through twelfth grade) can enter individual and group creations on the following themes:

  • Water—A Precious Resource: To highlight the importance of the quality of our tap and harbor water.
  • The New York City Water Supply System: To understand the history of the NYC drinking water system.
  • The New York City Wastewater Treatment System: To examine how the City treats nearly 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater every day.
  • Water Stewardship: What Can I do to Help Conserve Water? To bring attention to the value of water and ways to conserve it, and the NYC Green Infrastructure Plan as a cost-effective way to manage stormwater and ensure a clean NYC harbor.

The contest link again is: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/environmental_education/artpoetry.shtml

Please contact educationoffice@dep.nyc.gov with questions and inquiries. Tell them HarborLAB sent you!  🙂

 

 

 

Join a HarborLAB Google Group!

group

Maybe you have that missing piece of the puzzle to make a HarborLAB program click together! HarborLAB has peer-to-peer email list Google Groups to achieve our goals in Education, Fleet and Infrastructure, Funding, Outreach and Communications, and Safety and Public Events. We encourage volunteers and prospective volunteers to join groups that match their interests, either as active participants or to monitor and stay informed. Feel free to receive updates in digest form, but we hope to keep traffic low and purposeful.

Click on the hyperlinked group names below to sign up!

Education:

Sharing information and ideas to grow and improve HarborLAB’s educational mission and programs in the harbor and watershed (Neversink Reservoir). Share ideas for curricular integration and public programming, educational grants, and other means of serving educators. Join >

Fleet and Infrastructure:

Help build, select, and maintain HarborLAB’s boat fleet, gear stocks, dock, and shoreline infrastructure. Join >

Funding:

Share tips, plans, and ideas for funding HarborLAB, and keeping us on budget. This is the email list for you if you’re interested in seeking sponsors and applying for grants, producing fundraising parties and events, and maintaining fiscal transparency and accountability. Join >

Outreach and Communications:

Help grow HarborLAB through outreach to potential and existing volunteers, community and nonprofit partners, government agencies, and media. We’ll create new website features, a newsletter, postcards, literature, and other ways of building community. Join >

Safety and Public Events:

Help plan and organize HarborLAB’s public events and maintain safety (best practices, equipment, training) across programs. Join >

Free Reservoir Access Permit!

wac row your boat

Photo by Watershed Post (http://www.watershedpost.com/).

Get your free five-year access permit (
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/recreation/access.shtml) to paddle and hike our NYC reservoir system!

If you want to volunteer for HarborLAB’s Watershed Wonder Tours (aka ReservoirLAB), or even just participate, you’ll need this permit. Our watershed programs at the Neversink Reservoir begin Memorial Day, but we’d like volunteers to square this paperwork away early.

It’s quick and easy!

Please go to this link:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/recreation/access.shtml

And here’s our Facebook “event” promoting sign permit applications:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1405827916313561/

After completing the form, please email edu@harborlab.org with the subject line “Watershed,” telling us that you’ve applied for your permit and how you’d like to help. We’ll have both educational partnerships fostered by the NYC DEP and community “walk-up” days with educational and activity booths promoting other water ecology causes.

download

Photo by Google Maps/Google Earth.

Watershed Wonder Tours in the News

 

Neversink Reservoir. Catskill Watershed Corp.

A great write up on HarborLAB’s coming “Watershed Wonder Tours,” published
by DNAinfo:

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130711/long-island-city/city-kids-go-straight-source-on-catskills-watershed-tours

THE TRANSPORTATION GRANT APPLICATION IS DUE JULY 15:

http://www.nycwatershed.org/pdfs/BusTourRFP_000.pdf

The NYC DEP recommends that educators, paddling and ecological
organizations, and community groups focus programs on learning about how
forests clean and protect our water when applying for this grant. Keep in
mind that you can also use this grant to visit other reservoirs, though
Neversink is the only one with a free public fleet. We’re dipping a paddle
in the water in 2013 and really splashing down in 2014. One LIC has written
to that they’ve already applied, and another is interested, but this is for
all of NYC (and our country cousins)!  🙂

Neversink Reservoir. Catskill Watershed Corporation.