UA Extension Office organized a group of interested parties in a trip to Kansas City to learn about Rain Gardens. Participants learned the basics of building rain gardens, why they are important to the environment and toured some large and small rain gardens.

A free screening of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” gave many local residents a new outlook on global warming. Admission for the film was granted on a first-come, first-served basis and funds for the screening came from a group of business owners, at least one politician, members of Audubon Arkansas, the Sierra Club and the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology. Fayetteville Mayor Dan Coody spoke to residents before the movie and encouraged them to take a stand on environmental issues. While the issue of global warming is complex, most attendees said they walked away feeling uplifted rather than overwhelmed. After the movie, local residents gathered outside the theater to discuss ways they could reverse global warming with local activist groups.

Fayetteville’s Long Range Planning Division offered a “brown bag screening” of the PBS documentary “Chicago: City of the Big Shoulders” in August 2006. The hour-long program focuses on Chicago’s sustainability. Sustainability in city planning refers to planning efforts that attempt to take care of today’s needs without compromising natural resources and species for future generations. The documentary was shown as a “timely follow-up” to Fayetteville’s adoption of its City Plan 2025.

The Sierra Club took a group of area residents on a hike Saturday to talk about the condition of the Clear Creek watershed. The hike served as an opportunity to discuss streamology and the condition of Clear Creek in an effort to get people interested in learning about urban streams.

In an effort to educate the community on watershed issues, the League of Women Voters of Washington County purchased and donated a series of six manuals on small urban watershed management to the Fayetteville Public Library. Published by the Center for Watershed Protection, the manuals focus on a variety of urban watershed issues that provide common-sense, practical methods individuals and community groups can implement to protect, restore and repair water sources locally.