Speakers to Focus on Water March 10; ‘Clean Rivers’ Live-Stream Is Feb. 24

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The March breakfast program by the Environmental Professionals Network, featuring three guest speakers, is all about water.

Lisa Wojnarowski Downes, J.D., freshwater stewardship director for The Nature Conservancy, will speak on the Blueprint for Urban Water Security, a report on how conservation practices can help cities protect their drinking water sources; and on the Alliance for Watershed Stewardship, an effort to promote sustainable water use around the world, including by using a new water stewardship standard. Downes is the alliance’s North America director.

Dax Blake, P.E., administrator for the Columbus Division of Sewerage and Drainage, will talk about Blueprint Columbus, which aims to solve sanitary sewer overflows while transforming neighborhoods and creating some 700 permanent jobs.

And Marty Kress, assistant vice president of research development at The Ohio State University, will discuss the Global Water Initiative, designed to organize the efforts of the more than 250 Ohio State scientists who do research on some aspect of water.

The event goes from 7:15-9:30 a.m. on March 10 at the university’s Nationwide and Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Center, 2201 Fred Taylor Drive, in Columbus. Admission is open to both members and nonmembers of the network. The cost to register, which is $10 or $15 depending on how it’s paid, includes breakfast.

The first 30 attendees also will receive a free Delta water-saving showerhead provided by Unilever and AXE.

Find details and links to online registration and payment at go.osu.edu/xkg, or contact the network’s coordinator, David Hanselmann, at hanselmann.3@osu.edu or 614-247-1908.

Hanselmann is a lecturer in the School of Environment and Natural Resources in Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. The network is a service of the school.

Sponsoring the event is Scotts Miracle-Gro.

The network also just announced that the talk at its Feb. 24 breakfast program, “Cleaning Up America’s Rivers” by Chad Pregracke, will be live-streamed on YouTube starting at 8:45 a.m. Tune in at youtu.be/IV8XTNGIngM.

Pregracke is founder and president of Living Lands & Waters, a not-for-profit group that works to take trash out of major U.S. rivers. In 2013, he was named CNN’s Hero of the Year.

Registration to attend the Feb. 24 program in person is still open. Get details here.

Membership in the network is free and open to anyone working in or studying an environmental field. Details are at epn.osu.edu/home.

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