Conservation groups raise water awareness among local students

Lead educator Teresa Bosworth-Green said reaching out to children can actually be more effective than reaching out to adults.

“Children are knowledge sponges,” she said. “We get them thinking and talking, and they actually carry [the message] out to their families, parents and friends better than adults would.”

As a part of her presentation, Bosworth-Green references the pioneer days. She explains to students that water for drinking, cooking, bathing, doing laundry and growing crops had to be carried in buckets, and the settlers eventually learned to build windmills and water pumps to yield groundwater.

Payne said children should learn to conserve now because someday they will have to pay a much higher price for water when they become adults with children of their own.

Water conservation is vital because every living thing requires water to survive, Payne said.

“There are few things, finite or not, on this planet that we are so careless about wasting,” she said.

Payne said most people do not mean to waste water, and that changing old habits can come with little sacrifice, such as turning off the water when brushing one’s teeth or only watering a lawn when it needs it.

She said today’s children can learn from those in the past who had to carry water in buckets several times a day.

“Today’s students are quick to appreciate and understand that they have an important role in protecting this finite resource,” she said. “Quite simply, they learn from our past to influence our future.”