NEWS RELEASE

Date: Dec. 6, 2002

Gov. Davis honors water district’s
educational outreach program

SACRAMENTO – The Santa Clara Valley Water District has received the 2002 Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award for an educational outreach program that reaches thousands of Santa Clara County students and teachers each year.

The district’s program provides environmental education to students and educators, giving them the tools needed to integrate environmental principles into curriculums students receive in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school and college.

The district’s award - in the Children’s Environmental Education category - recognizes exemplary programs or curricula to raise children’s awareness of, and involvement in, environmental issues, especially when blended into existing core curriculum.

The district’s educational outreach coordinator, Kathy Machado, and water district Director Richard Santos accepted the award from state Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Winston Hickox and Mary Nichols, California Resources Agency secretary, during a ceremony Wednesday night in Sacramento.

“We are grateful for receiving such recognition and the award,” said Rosemary Kamei, chairwoman of the water district board of directors. “Our educational program over the years has reached tens of thousands of children, enabling future generations to learn about and appreciate water resources and the environment in which they live.”

The heart of the water district’s educational outreach program is environmental curricula that includes water conservation, non-point source pollution, local water resources, floods and and flood safety practices, water quality, stream stewardship and watershed awareness.

Popular classroom materials are designed for all grade levels, from pre-kindergarten through college. In addition to classroom visits, the district’s educational outreach program brings students to two outdoor classrooms for tours and hands-on activities, including water quality testing, exploration of a weather station and wildlife inventories.

Watershed lessons for preschoolers were developed and produced through collaboration with the Santa Clara County Office of Education Head Start program.

Machado and assistant Betty Martinez also train local environmental educators through Project WET, an international, interdisciplinary water-education program for teachers of students age 5-18.

In 2000-2001, the water district’s educational outreach program reached 18,485 students and 1,182 teachers in Santa Clara County.

The governor’s award comes on the heels of a certificate of appreciation to Machado from the California Department of Education for her service on state Superintendent of Schools Delaine Eastin’s Environmental Education Task Force. Eastin presented Machado with the certificate during a ceremony last month in Sacramento.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District manages Santa Clara County's wholesale drinking water resources, coordinates flood protection for its 1.7 million residents and provides stewardship for the county's 10 reservoirs and more than 700 miles of streams.