We love clean streams!

During the 6th annual Lancaster Water Week we celebrated just that. The Lancaster One Water Partnership hosted a total of three events for the community - each of which were different and fun.

We started with a native plant sale and rain garden celebration at Bright Side Baptist Church in Lancaster City on Saturday June 4th. We dedicated Bright Side's new rain garden, with a powerful message about the importance of water from Rev. John A Knight. A little later in the afternoon, a group from Landisville Mennonite Church entertained us with a puppet show about what NOT to put in our waterways. The education continued with Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren providing participants with an interactive watershed demonstration. Lancaster City’s Green Infrastructure Coordinator also spoke briefly at the event. A local artist joined us to help decorate two rain barrels which will be installed at Bright Side later this year.

Then the following afternoon (Sunday June 5th), we stretched our muscles and our minds as we rode along the Warwick to Ephrata Trail. We saw flowers and pollinators in Hope United Methodist Church’s meadow and learned about bike safety with The Common Wheel. Further down the trail we visited a riparian forest buffer with Alliance for the Chesapeake and then engaged in conversation about plastics with the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd. ON our final stop we toured Lititz Mennonite's growing native gardens. Our avid cyclists enjoyed the ride despite the heat, and thoroughly enjoyed some well-earned lemonade!

Water Week activities came to a close at Highland Presbyterian Church where we screened the movie, Flint: The Poisoning of an American City. It was an outdoor movie night, complete with popcorn and an inflatable movie screen! We watched the history of the water crisis in Flint, learned about ways that faith communities have been involved in support and advocacy, and explored environmental justice. Officials from the public works department of Lancaster City answered our questions about drinking water and safety, with Penn's Lead-Free Families initiative providing resources on child lead safety.

It was a great opportunity to show our community the importance of our local waterways and actions that local congregations in our region are taking to work towards the goals of clean and clear water. We are thankful to many of our partner congregations and regional partners who collaborated, organized, and assisted with these events!