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Stream Smart is an educational campaign designed to affect changes in behavior. One important change is an increased awareness of how our daily choices can impact our local streams and rivers. You can make Stream Smart choices at home, such as picking up after your pet, landscaping with porous materials, and restoring streamside (riparian) areas through planting trees to provide added shade. All of these actions work to help prevent water pollution and improve water quality. By providing information and tools that individuals need to make Stream Smart choices, we help to empower everyone to do their part to turn our streams from brown to blue.

Change starts with you!

HOW DID THIS CAMPAIGN START?

The Bear Creek Watershed Council (now the Rogue River Watershed Council), the Rogue Valley Council of Governments, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Jackson Soil and Water Conservation District, Rogue Valley Sewer Services, Rogue River Valley Irrigation District, local city and county representatives, and others teamed up in 2011 to develop a strategy to increase awareness and knowledge about simple, everyday behavior changes residents and businesses can adopt to improve the quality of water flowing in Bear Creek and the Rogue River.

Are you Stream Smart? Click below to find out!

Keep water other than rainwater and snowmelt from entering storm drains and ditches.
Properly dispose of or recycle motor oil, antifreeze, paint, solvents, and other materials.
Keep leaves, grass clippings, pet waste, soil, and litter out of storm drains, ditches, creeks, ponds, and wetlands.
Use non-toxic alternatives, and reduce or eliminate pesticide and herbicide use.
Plant native trees to protect bare soils, prevent erosion, and create wildlife habitat.
Stencil storm drains and participate in activities to learn more about stormwater.
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