New center for water education breaks ground

Construction is starting on a $2 million water education center near the Russian River in Forestville that has staff members at the Sonoma County Water Agency positively giddy at the prospect of replacing a deteriorating portable building in such bad shape that a visiting teacher once broke through the floor.

Officials say the timing is right given California’s historic drought and prospects for continuing water scarcity as the climate shifts. The new center will be dedicated to enhancing understanding of the region’s water supply and distribution system and promoting conservation.

“We’ve seen the excitement that’s generated by water education,” Supervisor Efren Carrillo said during a groundbreaking ceremony Friday attended by about 60 people. Carrillo represents the west county, including much of the lower Russian River area.

California’s water supply needs will test future generations’ ingenuity, technology and scientific know-how, he said, adding, “This is where that creativity is cultivated.”

The new project is being built on an old rock quarry between Westside Road and the Wohler Bridge, near the county parks’ Maxwell Grove boat launch.

It is to be completed in July and will be put in service for the next school year, welcoming thousands of students from Sonoma and Marin counties who come each year to learn about the Russian River watershed, which acts as region’s water delivery system while providing habitat for endangered fish and other wildlife.

The Water Agency’s 33-year-old education program includes classroom visits, field trips and experiments, providing students various ways to better understand an essential natural resource.

“No classroom activity can inspire the spark of creativity like this can,” said Gary Graves, a sixth-grade teacher at Mark West Elementary School who has partnered with agency educators through field trips and weekly water testing at Mark West Creek as part of a yearlong unit that includes the release of steelhead trout fingerlings that are hatched in the classroom.

His former student, Santa Rosa seventh-grader Natalie Whiting, was among those who spoke Friday about the important role of the education program, and how eye-opening it was for her to learn about the complex system that permits people to just turn on the tap and have clean water in their homes.

“Science has become one of my favorite subjects,” the Santa Rosa Middle School student said.

The education program includes students in kindergarten to 12th grade in the service area of the Water Agency, which supplies about 600,000 customers in Sonoma and northern Marin counties.

Close to 3,000 fifth-graders annually visit the double-wide modular unit that serves as a lab and classroom for the program.

Over time, the program has benefited almost 27,000 students from 1,133 schools, said Dennis Rodoni, a director with the North Marin Water District and chairman of the agency’s Water Advisory Committee.

The new facility will feature two low-profile buildings connected by a breezeway with an amphitheater and drought-tolerant landscaping.

Students will walk through the redwood grove down to the river and can hike another half-mile or so to the Mirabel Fish Screen under construction. It is set to include a large, underwater viewing chamber where visitors can watch salmon and steelhead swim past.

Carrillo said that Carl Sagan, the late celebrity astronomer, once noted “how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.”

Tim Anderson, government affairs coordinator for the Water Agency, said later, “I think it’s the most important thing we do.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249?or mary.callahan@?pressdemocrat.com. ?On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.