 Hello everyone, I'm Alicia Woodruff and welcome to the Fort Report. I know people in Fort Worth like to help make a better community. And here is one more way that you can clean up the neighborhood and keep our stormwater facility functioning better. Trash in our waterways is a big environmental problem, and it costs the city to clean up the waterways. An effective way to control the trash problem is to educate the public and create awareness. The City of Fort Worth Stormwater Management Department awards utility fee credits to create a greater awareness of the trash problem and gives a financial incentive for participants involved in cleanup. The cleanup program is called Adopt a Creek. Other utility fee credits are given for practices such as water quality treatment and detention ponds, parking lot sweeping, and industrial permit compliance. Adopt a Creek program is included in our credits for the stormwater utility fee, which is to encourage communities to get together, organize and clean up trash in a creek, and come up with some type of community awareness of the problem of litter. And in doing so, we were able to tie it with a utility fee to encourage these groups to clean up our creeks, and as such they receive a small credit, which is a small credit but it gives back something to them for them helping us to clean up all of the debris that's in our creeks. When you see trash in the park or the street, where does it go? It does not magically disappear, but it will clog up the stormwater drainage pipe. It can clog the storm drain system and it deteriorates the quality of the receiving waters. People think like this. If you look at it, it's got plastic, it's got color in there, so all those chemicals that make up this item that I'm holding, as simple as this, when the sunlight breaks these chemicals and the water then mixes in with these chemicals, the water will just transport all those chemicals. So at the chemical level, at the molecular level, all this stuff releases contaminants into the environment. So that's a very good reason not to do that. Number two is this just becomes like an eye blight. People don't like to see trash around. The program requires once a year clean up of the creek. This program serves as an opportunity for the participants not only to clean up the creek, but also get educated about what type of trash ends up. Here's another very common problem we see over here. Plastic bags, of course we get plastic bottles, paper products, these also float very easily. We all want to try to prevent these kinds of pollutants from reaching our waterways because all of these things consist of chemicals. Last spring volunteers collected over 40 bags of trash. Everything is improved. Our creeks are cleaner, our structures are cleaner, our drainage facilities work better. So it really is a total win-win for everybody. For more information about the Adopt a Creek program, just call 817-392-7919. And here's a look at other events happening in and around the city of Fort Worth in the next few weeks. For a listing of more events and city meetings, you can always check the calendar at the city's website.