The contest was organized by the Plum Creek Watershed Partnership to showcase images that demonstrate what folks around the Plum Creek Watershed value about their environment.
Submissions reflect a love for landscapes, farmland and working lands, plant life or animal life, weather, canoeing, camping, hiking, or biking—basically anything that conveys enjoyment and appreciation of our riparian areas and the great outdoors in general.
We received more than 40 original submissions, making the final selection process extremely difficult for the judges!
Congratulations to Adrian Gutierrez, photo contest winner and recipient of a brand new 60-gallon rainwater harvesting barrel as Grand Prize winner in our ‘Plum Creek Watershed Photo Contest! Adrian’s winning photo was taken of the Lockhart State Park Waterfall along Clearfork Creek. Congratulations Adrian!
The City of Kyle is taking a futuristic approach to keeping its parks clean with an agreement for a robotic litter collection service developed by Jason Lewis and John Connolly, co-founders of Mekaworks. Their autonomous robot litter collector can traverse park terrain and uses machine vision to see litter, while also lowering the cost of litter cleanup in parks.
Since 2008, the Plum Creek Watershed Partnership, in collaboration with Keep Lockhart Beautiful, has hosted the annual Keep Lockhart Beautiful/Plum Creek/Lockhart Springs/Town Branch Cleanup and Environmental Fair, a day when we gather together to pick up trash before it makes its way into our waterways.
From 2008 to 2020, more than 2,000 volunteers removed over 10,000 pounds of trash in what has become the largest and one of the longest-running annual volunteer events in Caldwell County. In 2019, 200+ volunteers cleared more than 500 pounds of trash from city property and waterways—all in a matter of hours.
New rules in 2020! This year the Annual Keep Lockhart Beautiful/Plum Creek/Lockhart Springs/Town Branch Cleanup looked a little different. In order to maintain the safety of our community, it was a month-long event that ran from October 15 to November 15 in an effort to be social-distance friendly. As our community navigates the pandemic, we at the Plum Creek Watershed Partnership are embracing the necessary changes to accomplish our goals.
We have been busy processing the cleanup data, which includes results of all clean up team efforts, tallying the pounds of trash collected, and counting the individual items picked up. We feel so grateful for all of the volunteers that work so hard to clean our local waterways.
We cleaned areas from Kyle, through Lockhart and all the way to Luling. That’s more than 50 miles of waterway cleaned!
2020 Results!
- Plum Creek Watershed Partnership conducted two official cleanups.
- Volunteers dedicated 170 hours to cleaning the waterways.
- More than 500 pounds of litter were removed.
A Texas Watershed Steward workshop on the relationship between land stewardship and water quality in the Plum Creek Watershed was held on September 2 at the Luling Foundation Agriculture Demonstration Farm. The Workshop was presented by Texas A&M AgriLife Extension program staff in cooperation with the Plum Creek Watershed Partnership.
The Texas Watershed Steward program is a one-day educational training event designed to inform watershed residents about ways to improve and protect community water resources. A watershed is an area of land that water flows across, through or under on its way to a stream, river, lake, ocean, or other body of water. EVERYONE lives in a watershed, and everyone should be a Texas Watershed Steward.
Attendees of the workshop received a copy of the Texas Watershed Steward Handbook and a certificate of completion. The Texas Watershed Steward program also offers four hours of continuing education for the following professional disciplines: soil and water management for certified crop advisers; professional engineers; AICP certified planners (4 CM & 1.5 law); certified teachers; professional geoscientists; certified landscape architects; certified floodplain managers; and each of the following Texas Commission on Environmental Quality occupational licensees: wastewater system operators, public water system operators, on-site sewage facility installers, and landscape irrigators. In addition, three general continuing education units are offered for Texas Department of Agriculture pesticide license holders, and two credits are offered for nutrient management specialists.
Funding for this effort is provided through a federal Clean Water Act §319(h) Nonpoint Source Grant administered by the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
If you are interested in attending a future Texas Watershed Steward Workshop, please contact Plum Creek Watershed Coordinator, Stephen Risinger.