Back to Basics

The McDonald County Back to Basics group was formed last November with its mission to support and elevate the quality of community life through collaborative efforts meeting the basic needs of the McDonald County residents. I have been a member of this group since it started and it's been wonderful meeting people in the county that I would not have met otherwise, and learning different things from them such as new ways to garden and how to preserve or make homemade products.

At our June meeting I was able to teach our members about our water. I told them I didn't wear a lot of hats, but I did wear a lot of shirts. I started off telling them about the AmeriCorps program, and how, through the Missouri River Communities Network, we were able to become Stream Team assistants.

Then I spoke about the watershed and the Elk River Watershed Improvement Association. I used the groundwater flow model for demonstrating how the groundwater flows and where most of us in our area get our drinking water. This brought up pollution and how easily our wells could be contaminated with our karst topography.

Next, I told about the educational presentations that ERWIA puts on for the area 5th graders, with the watershed festival in the fall and then the follow-up classroom presentations in the spring. This led into the Stream Team presentation that I had done for the classroom visits.
Most everyone had heard of the Stream Team program but most had never been involved. There was a concensus that because water is such a basic and important part of everyday life that there should be more interaction between the B2B group and ERWIA with a possibility of helping with a Stream Team project.