News Release No. 433

MISSOURI CELEBRATES WORLD WATER MONITORING DAY

Volume 33-433

Contact: Susan Bloomer

(For immediate release)

573-526-1825

JEFFERSON CITY, MO, OCT. 17, 2005-The Missouri Department of Natural Resources will join the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at 2 p.m., Oct. 18 to celebrate World Water Monitoring Day at Frontier Park on the Missouri Riverfront in Historic St. Charles.

Floyd Gilzow, deputy director of policy for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and Dan Schuette, director of the department's Division of Environmental Quality, will join Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for EPA's office of water and Jim Gulliford, EPA Region 7 administrator, along with other local partners for World Water Monitoring Day.

World Water Monitoring Day caps off a month-long monitoring effort in which people throughout the world test the quality of their local watersheds and enter the results into an international database.

Gilzow will present information on Missouri stream teams, one of the nation's best volunteer monitoring programs with more than 2,500 teams assisted and coordinated by the departments of Natural Resources and Conservation. "We are very proud of the accomplishments of the Missouri stream teams," said Gilzow. "This corps of 50,000 volunteers are the unsung heroes in our efforts to protect the streams, rivers and lakes that are the cornerstone of our vibrant recreation and tourism industry."

At the event, EPA will present a $95,900 grant to the Missouri River Communities Network to fund a project to teach teachers about storm water runoff, water quality monitoring and how to integrate a clean water curriculum that meets state education standards.

Event attendees will accompany the Francis Howell High School stream team down to the Missouri River, where the students will lead a water-testing session and look for certain animal species that indicate the health of a stream. Officials will be available for questions during a 15-minute poster session at the start of the event and during the water testing session.

For more information, call Susan Bloomer of the Department of Natural Resources' Water Protection Program at 800-361-4827 or 573-751-1300 or visit www.worldwatermonitoringday.org.

For news releases on the Web, visit www.dnr.mo.gov/newsrel. For a complete listing of the department's upcoming meetings, hearings and events, visit the department's online calendar at www.dnr.mo.gov/calendar/search.do.

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