The One Water concept is garnering significant attention among the natural resource conservation community in 2023, having been featured as the theme for the recent annual Stewardship Week of the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD). One Water also is the focus of the group’s 2023 poster and photo contests and the subject of educational materials made available to schools nationwide, helping to raise the profile of holistic water management among students and the general public across the United States.

One Water practitioners

The nonprofit NACD represents America’s 3,000 conservation districts and the 17,000 individuals who serve on their governing boards. “Conservation districts are local units of government established under state law to carry out natural resource management programs at the local level,” according to the NACD’s website. “Districts work with millions of cooperating landowners and operators to help them manage and protect land and water resources on private and public lands in the United States.”

The group’s mission entails promoting “responsible management and conservation of natural resources on all lands by representing locally-led conservation districts and their associations through grassroots advocacy, education and partnerships,” according to the NACD’s website.

Through their work to protect and conserve soil and water resources, conservation districts across the country naturally fit within the One Water movement, says Denise Savageau, an environmental planner, the Northeast Region chair for the NACD, and one of the individuals who advocated for the group to adopt One Water as the theme of its 2023 Stewardship Week. “We teach hydrology,” Savageau says. “We teach the water cycle.” 

Soil and water conservation districts tend to “work in the upper parts of the watershed,” Savageau says, focusing on such key efforts as restoring soil health, protecting forests and wetlands, and facilitating groundwater infiltration and recharge. They also frequently participate in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Section 319 Nonpoint Source Management Program, which provides grants for a variety of efforts to address nonpoint source pollution. “The One Water movement fits into exactly what we do,” she says.

Stewardship Week theme

Held annually since 1955, Stewardship Week is the NACD’s “largest public awareness campaign each year,” says Keith Owen, the organization’s director of education. Always the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in May, Stewardship Week this year occurred from April 30 to May 6.

Each year, the NACD selects both a topic and a theme for Stewardship Week. “The topic is the general resource concern for the year and the theme is the tagline, if you will,” Owen says. For 2023, the NACD selected watersheds as its topic for Stewardship Week. Watersheds was chosen because of its broad applicability. “It's an urban concern,” he says. “It's a rural concern. It's a large landowner concern, a small landowner concern.”

In late 2021, the NACD’s Coastal Resources Policy Group, of which Savageau was a member, and its Stewardship and Education Committee recommended the selection of One Water as the theme for Stewardship Week in 2023, Owen says. The recommendation was accepted, in part, because of the ongoing efforts of the U.S. Water Alliance to promote the One Water concept, Owen says. 

“It was suggested that working cooperatively with the U.S. Water Alliance on a One Water initiative would be a synergistic way to increase everyone's outreach capacity,” Owens says.

For its part, the U.S. Water Alliance is “thrilled to see One Water as the theme for the National Association of Conservation Districts’ Stewardship Week,” says Mami Hara, the alliance’s chief executive officer. “One Water is for everyone and every place,” Hara says. “By embracing One Water, the NACD is embracing the mindset that all water has value and needs to be managed in an inclusive, integrated, and sustainable manner.” 

Poster, photo contests

Each year as part of Stewardship Week, the NACD kicks off its poster contest for students from kindergarten through twelfth grade and its photo contest for youths and adults. The contests center around the topic and theme selected for that year’s Stewardship Week.

Held separately for hand-drawn and digital submissions, the poster contests begin at the local level, with individual soil and water conservation districts choosing winners from each age group. The winning submissions then proceed to regional contests. Winners at the regional level compete at the state level, where one winner per grade is selected to proceed to the national competition. 

In past years, poster contest participants have submitted “amazing work,” Savageau says.

“We generally have 40 to 42 states that participate in the national competition,” Owen says. “We do have some of the territories that send those in as well.” The photo contest, by contrast, occurs at the national level only. A panel of five judges selects the national winner of the poster contest for each grade as well as the winners of the photo contest. National winners of the poster and photos contests will be announced at the NACD’s 2024 annual meeting, to be held in San Diego from February 10–14.

One Water curriculum

As part of Stewardship Week, the NACD also makes available free curriculum materials on its website. Created in-house by the NACD, this year’s materials include a One Water Curriculum Guide that offers activities for teachers that can be adapted to any grade level. “We combine that all into one curriculum guide so that teachers can make their own decisions about what activities are appropriate for their students,” Owen says.

Topics for 2023 include watersheds, the different types of water bodies, river basins and water quality, saltwater and saltwater habitats, sediment and pollution transport by runoff, and the water cycle.

As part of this year’s One Water Curriculum Guide, the NACD correlated the lessons in the guide to the Next Generation Science Standards, content standards for kindergarten through 12th grade that were developed by 26 states. Linking the lessons to the standards is important “because teachers unfortunately don't have time to do things in their classroom that aren't associated with lesson plans and learning objectives,” Owen says. “This will allow them to take those activities that we've given them and correlate those to education standards and incorporate them into their lesson plans.”

Other curriculum materials include a PowerPoint presentation explaining the concept of watersheds and the rules for this year’s poster contest. Bookmarks, activity sheets, and posters also are available from the NACD’s website.

At the local level, NACD member districts promote the curriculum materials to schools in their service area. Such districts often use social media to showcase the materials to an even wider audience, Owen says.