Rogers County’s Dog Creek Watershed Festival

August 21, 2009

Several hundred residents of the Dog Creek watershed braved the rain to attend Rogers County’s first Watershed Festival on Saturday, August 15, 2009. The event was hosted by the Dog Creek Watershed Advisory Council and its member agencies.

**Visitors learned about erosion at a portable stream table.**

The Watershed Festival was a chance for residents to learn about how events in the watershed of Claremore Lake can affect their lives. The event included an activity that showed how the water cycle really works called “The Incredible Journey.” The activity includes an obstacle course that had participants acting as water drops running their course through clouds, rain, a water treatment plant, drinking water faucets and eventually through the waste water treatment plant and back to the ocean.

**Participants were loaned fishing poles to try their luck in the lake.**

Other demonstrations included a portable stream table complete with minnows, crayfish and aquatic insects to shows how unprotected stream banks erode. Attendants could borrow a fishing pole to catch a fish and had the opportunity to put their name in for a drawing to win complete fishing rod outfits and a grand drawing for a rain barrel at the end of the day. The Claremore police and fire departments were on hand to give out fishing tackle and assist with the event.

**Participants were also treated to free hot dogs.**

The Dog Creek Watershed Advisory Council is a coalition of local, state, and federal agencies whose goal is to improve the water quality in the Dog Creek watershed through education and better management practices. Members of the council include the City of Claremore, Rogers County Conservation District, OSU Cooperative Extension Service, the Department of Environmental Quality, Rogers County and the Indian Nation Council of Governments.