Rain barrels are one of many green infrastructure projects by the nonprofit Healthy Community ... [+]
Healthy Community Services helps alleviate flooding in New Orleans with green infrastructure projects built by local residents. Jourdan Imani Keith of Seattle uses verse to inspire and educate people about drinking water sources.
The two are among this year’s recipients of the annual US Water Prize from the nonprofit US Water Alliance. Six others also were chosen for the honor, which recognizes individuals and organizations “driving innovation in the water sector and imagining new possibilities in water.”
Healthy Community Services was named in the Outstanding Nonprofit Organization category for its Water Wise 7th Ward project.
“Overall, we engage, educate and empower residents to make decisions around stormwater management and understand our unique system of pumps, pipes and drains,” says Angela M. Clark, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Healthy Community Services.
The project has been awarded funding from the Kresge Foundation and other organizations.
“What makes it unique is residents come together and they choose the sites.”
The largest work to date is a bioswale on state property that manages 35,000 gallons of water on a hurricane evacuation route and major African-American business corridor, Clark says.
Prior to the last year’s installation, it was “impassable” during storms. “We have not reached our capacity with it because the native plants and native trees are there that help the water to infiltrate into the ground.”
Flooding in New Orleans is one problem that Healthy Community Services is working to alleviate.
Prize organizers say challenges in the water sector and across the United States are growing and increasingly exacerbated by climate change. The impact is particularly felt by low-income and communities of color. The Alliance estimates that 2 million people in the U.S. experience a lack of access to clean drinking water and sanitation.
“We talk about greening spaces and the high crime issues that we have here with young men who have contact with criminal justice system,” Clark says. “These young men have been trained to build and maintain these green infrastructure projects ... That translates into real wealth-building, high paying jobs for African-American men and women.”
Keith, a poet, spoken word artist and founder and director of the Urban Wilderness Project, was named in the Outstanding Artist category for work with Seattle Public Utilities that’s “elevated water and connected environmental and social messages in a deeply personal way.”
Jourdan Imani Keith
For three years, she worked on a podcast called “Women & Whales First, Poetry in a Climate of Change.”
“The focus of it is to help people understand: the impact that we have on water comes back to us,” Keith says.
“There’s cumulative risks that can occur as well as cumulative benefits from understanding our cultural connections to water as well as the species besides ourselves that depend on a healthy freshwater and marine environment.”
Living in Seattle and hearing about the plight of endangered orcas, it was impossible not to see the parallel to humans, she says.
Her day job is as an employee of Seattle Public Utilities, taking people on tours of the the 90,000-acre Cedar River Watershed, a protected area which provides drinking water to most of the 1.5 million people living in the great Seattle area.
Besides Healthy Community Services and the poet Keith, this year’s US Water Prize winners include:
- Outstanding Public Sector Organization: City and County of Honolulu
- Outstanding Private Sector Organization: Schneider Electric/Willingboro Municipal Utilities Authority
- Outstanding Cross-Sector Partnership: Jordan Lake One Water
- Outstanding Public Official: Gov. Tony Evers
- Outstanding Rising One Water Leader: Maura Jarvis
- One Water Communication: the Great Lakes News Collaborative.
The 2022 US Water Prize winners were selected from more than 160 nominations and applications, with the victors announced today at the One Water Summit in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A key factor in choosing winners was picking those with ideas and projects that are scalable and can be adopted by other communities and organizations, organizers say.
The US Water Alliance has been around since 2008 and “advances policies and programs to secure a sustainable water future for all.”
Its nearly 200 members and partners include community leaders, water providers, public officials, business leaders, environmental organizations and policy organizations.
