The Izaak Walton League of America (IWLA), a national leader in community-based conservation, presented Austin Chapter 10 with its prestigious national Save Our Streams Award. The chapter received the award last month at the League’s annual convention in Sioux Falls, S.D., in recognition of chapter members’ outstanding contributions to environmental education and citizen activism for clean water.

Austin Chapter 10 launched its clean water efforts in 1989 with a pilot project in Mower County elementary schools. The chapter engaged students to study water quality and possible pollution sources. Fourth grade students focused on water cycles, fifth-graders on the availability of fresh water, and sixth-graders on non-point source pollution from sources such as septic tanks, urban development and wetland drainage. The projected culminated with sixth grade classes measuring water quality in Dobbins Creek at the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center.

Since then, Austin Chapter 10 and their young volunteers have collected 20 years of water quality data in Dobbins Creek. Along the way, they discovered dozens of homes discharging sewage directly into public waterways. The chapter took their water data — along with E. coli bacteria collected from the creek by chapter members — to Mower County commissioners to document inadequate septic treatment in Dobbins Creek and the Cedar River. Today, Dobbins Creek and the Cedar River flow a lot cleaner. In a recent statewide “Clean Water, Land and Legacy” referendum, Mower County had one of the highest percentages of residents who voted for this amendment — a tribute to the impact this chapter has on its community.

“Austin Chapter 10 exemplifies the kind of volunteer leadership and commitment to conservation that the Izaak Walton League is all about,” said Mike Williams, the League’s national president. “We are proud to count them among our ranks, and to honor their service to protecting America’s outdoors with this award.”