This month the City of Santa Rosa was honored by the California Stormwater Quality Association (CASQA) for our outstanding efforts to protect our community’s waterways from pollutants. Santa Rosa Water’s Storm Water & Creeks team proudly accepted CASQA’s 2023 Outstanding Public Outreach Project Award for their innovative and inspiring Streets to Creeks education campaign focused on preventing trash and pollutants from entering our waterways from neighborhood streets. 

• Outstanding Public Outreach / Engagement Project or Program

  • Storm Drains Connect STREETS TO CREEKS, Ours to Protect - City of Santa Rosa
  • Streets to Creeks is an innovative and extraordinary public outreach campaign inspiring individuals and communities to protect their local waterways. Streets to Creeks has strategically employed a diverse array of bilingual media to create awareness about the impact that everyday activities at home and work have on water quality in local waterways, to inspire community action to reduce pollution at the source. The program has created a cohesive regional brand, uniting outreach efforts across over a dozen jurisdictions.

The City’s Information & Technology team was also honored with the Best Management Practice (BMP) Implementation Project Award for developing an in-house Low Impact Development (LID) software program and database in collaboration with the Storm Water & Creeks team. This technological advancement allows team members to easily track and monitor the effectiveness of LID features around the city that are designed to capture storm water runoff and protect water quality. 

• Outstanding Stormwater BMP Implementation Project or Program: Phase I

  • Low Impact Development Compliance Manager Application - City of Santa Rosa
  • This application was developed from the ground up by the City of Santa Rosa. It is currently tracking 1,460 LID features across 139 projects. This software and database project tackles the most difficult challenges of tracking, monitoring, and inspecting Low Impact Development within the city. The application automates much of the manual work in generating the documentation for communicating corrective actions to Responsible Parties.

Santa Rosa is also proud to share that the Student Stormwater Science Project Award winner this year is Sonoma State University (SSU). Santa Rosa Water collaborated with SSU’s Water Research Methods class to test the impacts of homelessness on water quality in Santa Rosa and Russell creeks. 

• Outstanding Stormwater Science Project or Program: Student

  • Analysis of Water Quality Near Areas of Homeless Activity on Santa Rosa Creek and Russell Creek - Claudia Mayo, Sonoma State University
  • This project lays the foundation for future analysis of the impact of homeless encampments on water quality in stormwater entering urban creeks. Water quality was tested upstream and downstream of areas with frequent homeless encampments on Santa Rosa Creek and Russell Creek.

Congratulations to all our teams and partners involved in these award-winning efforts to protect our watershed!