Education has been at the heart of the District’s mission for more than 75 years.

Our youth education program focuses on connecting individuals with their local environment through student-led investigations. We offer lessons on the water cycle, stormwater pollutants, watersheds, brook trout, soil health, pollinators, and invasive plants and pests to schools, after-school programs, and summer camps. Our program is extremely popular with teachers, as we also provide trainings and loanable lesson kits.

The District’s youth education program is partly funded through partnerships with the City of Portland’s Greener Neighborhoods, Cleaner Streams program, Interlocal Stormwater Working Group communities, and the Portland Water District. The popularity of our education program almost always outpaces our ability to secure funding each year. Despite the many successful years of community participation and fundraising through the Urban Runoff 5k, the event coordination greatly reduced the amount of time the District could spend in classrooms during the busiest part of the school year. The District now allows community businesses to directly support our youth education program, which means more students reached at more schools!

In the 2023-2024 school year we:

• Taught over 3,300 students for 7,683 total contact hours

• Visited 26 schools in 13 communities

• Raised 4,800 native brook trout to be released at local streams