The City of St Cloud Wants You to Name a Drain

Have you ever wondered exactly where your drinking water comes from? Here in St. Cloud, we get our drinking water from the mighty Mississippi River. I had the pleasure of speaking with Noah Czech, the Stormwater Compliance Coordinator for the city of St. Cloud, and Rocio Durkot, the Water Quality Manager for the city of St. Cloud earlier today, and they shared some interesting information about what stormwater is, and how the community can get involved in keeping our water clean in the spring.

ADOPT A STORM DRAIN

The city of St. Cloud has a goal to get 50 of the nearly 8,000 storm drains that operate throughout St. Cloud adopted this year, to help protect water quality for everyone and protect our local waterways.

Get our free mobile app

CHOOSE YOUR STORM DRAIN AND GIVE IT A NAME

They make it fun with their 'Adopt-A-Drain' program. You can choose the drains you would like to adopt, and then you simply visit those drains a few times a year and clean up around them. This time of year, there can be dirt, leaves, garbage, and even salt that can get into those waterways. By adopting a drain, you give the gift of clean water by simply collecting the polluting material and throwing it away before it gets into our stormwater system.

For example, I adopted four drains that were located close to my home. I simply checked them out on my drive home, and about 4 times a year, I would clean them, collecting the material around the drains.

You can then weigh the material collected and inform them through the website what type of materials you collected. The page will tell you how much garbage and pollutants have been collected to date.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE

It's a great way to teach your children about the importance of taking care of our planet and the responsibilities that we all have. This volunteer effort is fun, can be done as a family, a group, or individually, and you can even name your drains. I named all four of our adopted drains after Star Wars characters.

I believe right now, out of the approximately 8,000 drains in St. Cloud, only 500 or so are adopted.