More Watershed Education

 Since 2021 the Merito Foundation has organized the Ventura River Action Network for 6th through 12th graders.  

https://www.meritofoundation.org/venturariveractionnetwork

 

The V-RAN program includes Professional Development (PD) outdoors in the field, PD webinars, Science Curricula, and stipends to science teachers of VUSD enrolled in the program. The teachers' students (~600-700 per school year) are participating in in-class science activities, virtual and in the field youth community science experiences at Ventura River Watershed, and project-based learning through the EECCOA Challenge (a green STEM competition) with cash and in-kind prizes for students, and funds to implement the most cost-effective proposal to reduce the carbon footprint of the school campus authored by the students. 

The program includes field trips to monitor the river and visit Matilija Dam.  Visit the Story Map to learn more:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4d93e82e5977448996aa64ba1e3d18a2

 

Watershed Education

 

OjaiValleyNews.com

For more than a decade, Once Upon a Watershed has provided environmental education to local schools.  The program introduces our watershed to hundreds of students every year both in the classroom and field trips along the river.  This originated from "Once upon a Wetland"  engaging students in hands-on restoration at the Ojai Meadows Preserve and featured in Watershed Revolution.  This locally produced film was aired nationwide on PBS. 

The current program is housed under The CREW, which has secured a permit from County government to take groups of students and others up to the obsolete Matilija Dam.

The tours also help demonstrate why the dam, located on 400 acres owned by the County of Ventura, needs to come down. “The single most important thing for the health of the Ventura River watershed is to remove Matilija Dam,” White said.

Despite the Ventura County Board of Supervisors approving the removal of the dam in 1998, said White, “the fact that we’re still here 25 years later looking at this big slab of concrete is somewhat frustrating.”

Not only does the dam block sediment from moving downstream and replenishing the beaches, it blocks passage of endangered southern steelhead, White told students.

What’s more, sediment backfilling the dam has tailed back so far that, in places, it’s actually made the creek higher than the access road into the canyon. “So whenever there is a flood the road gets taken out,” White said, “and that’s problematic for the people who are living in Matilija Canyon, because it’s one road in and out.” During January’s heavy downpours, residents had to be flown in and out of the canyon by helicopter.

Nearly all the public schools Once Upon a Watershed works with are Title 1 schools, “which indicates they’re in a disadvantaged or low income community,” said White, who takes fourth-, fifth- and six-graders to different places in the watershed. “We’re based in Ojai and so we run programs primarily in the Ventura River watershed.”

Once Upon a Watershed is funded by grants and operates on an annual budget of approximately $100,000, White said. OVS has been highly supportive of the program, he added.

“It’s such an important thing for young people to understand where our water comes from,” said sixth-grade teacher Ryan Lang, who grew up in Matilija Canyon and still resides there.

Once Upon a Watershed website features an interactive image map

Link to: 

Once Upon a Watershed mural

Watershed Revolution film 

Oak Grove School - Sixth Grade Trip to the Dam

On this Blog:

Watershed Revolution

Once Upon a Watershed

The Story of Our River

Salmon Run 2016

Ojai Meadows Preserve

Matilija Dam Student video - Merito Foundation program

In the News:

Lessons at the Dam, by Perry Van Houten, Ojai Valley News,  Nov 9, 2023 Updated Nov 13, 2023   

Matilija Dam Student video

This spring, Buena High School students created a video on the removal of Matilija Dam.  These students are participants in the ECCOA Program of the MERITO Foundation.  

EECCOA empowers students to address climate change and ocean acidification by providing them the tools to research, design and innovate Energy Efficiency or other sustainability models their schools can adopt, or develop Ocean Acidification (OA) awareness campaigns that inform their communities.

To bring awareness of the Matilija Dam and its removal, Breanna and Ixzel interviewed Paul Jenkin from the Surfrider Foundation at the Matilija Dam to get insight into why the dam should be removed and its history.  Their video production won first place in the annual ECCOA Award program.

 

Watershed education

This year I participated in the Ojai Valley School 6th grade integrated curriculum based on the Ventura River watershed.  Teachers Ryan Lang and Sherri Usher teamed up to provide a hands-on experiential learning opportunity for this small class of 6th graders.

The field experiences included trips to Pine Mountain, Matilija Creek and Matilija Dam, Ventura River, Ojai Sanitary Plant, and the estuary and Surfers' Point.  The field trips are described here: http://prezi.com/by9f734zfuqv/ventura-river-water-shed/

This week the class visited Surfers' Point where they helped clean up some of the iceplant and debris that was imported with the sand from Pierpont:

Once Upon a Watershed

The Once Upon a Watershed (OUW) program provides hands-on watershed education, restoration, and stewardship opportunities to 4th -6th grade students in the Ventura River Watershed. The program was featured in Watershed Revolution.

Once Upon a Watershed is the only watershed-specific environmental education program available in local schools, and provides one of the only pre-paid opportunity for teachers to get their students out on field trips.

Throughout the course of the 3-year program, students learn about a diversity of topics in the natural sciences, including oak ecology, watersheds, and river processes through in-class presentations and field trips. Students get the opportunity to take field trips to places such as the Ojai Meadows Preserve, Confluence Preserve, Ventura River mouth, Foster Park, and various other spots along the Ventura River. On all field trips, students are given the opportunity to contribute to real ongoing restoration projects, often by planting native plants or picking up trash. In this way, students are empowered to help restore our open spaces.





On a recent field trip to the mouth of the river I asked the students if they knew what Surfrider does. One student said "Scoop the Poop!" This is a quote from "Sea to Summit", a video produced by the Surfrider Foundation and shown in the classroom part of the program. I think they were stoked to have a real 'Surfrider' talk to their class at the beach!








Several of the kids teamed up to remove a tire and tent half buried in the estuary. It took a half hour of digging and pulling...











Last month Once Upon a Watershed was informed that their 3-year federal grant has been withdrawn after the first year - a victim of the federal budget cuts.

For more information or to help support this important program, please see http://onceuponawatershed.org/


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