There are about 1,400 miles of streams and rivers in Lancaster County, and over 75% of them are impaired, or unhealthy, for aquatic life, according to a Lancaster County Conservation District analysis of Department of Environmental Protection data. These streams and rivers provide our drinking water, habitat for wildlife, and places to recreate. It is alarming that so many of our waterways are polluted, but we believe healthy streams and rivers are possible in our lifetime if we all take action to save them.
During Lancaster Water Week, join us in celebrating the county’s waterways and the steps we can take – together – to restore and care for them. There is something everyone can do to make a positive difference for our waterways!
1. Explore Your Local Waterways
Enjoy a picnic beside a creek. Take a hike along a river. Get your feet wet to cool off on a warm day. Flip over rocks in a stream to see what’s living underneath. Go tubing, kayaking, or fishing. And bring your family and friends along, too! The first step in caring for our waterways is connecting with them. When we fall in love with our streams and rivers, it’s easy to see why they’re worth protecting. Let your observations as you explore motivate you in your clean water efforts.
2. Plant Native Trees
Native trees and shrubs help absorb and filter runoff while providing important habitat for wildlife. When rainwater flows over pavement, lawns, fields, and even bare stream banks, it can pick up pollutants like nitrogen, phosphorus, harmful bacteria, misapplied pesticides, and sediment. Trees help to filter these pollutants out of runoff. Trees and other native plants also help absorb runoff, reducing flooding. If you don’t have room for a tree, consider building a rain garden filled with native plants to help capture rainwater from your driveway or roof. (We’ll be handing out free native trees and wildflower seeds at some Water Week events. Keep an eye out for them in Lancaster City’s Penn Square throughout the week as well!)
3. Get Involved in Your Local Watershed Organization
A watershed is an area of land where all the rainfall, snowmelt, and runoff drain into the same body of water. Local watershed organizations help monitor and care for our creeks and streams. Find out which watershed you live in here, and then see how you can get involved with your local watershed organization, whether that’s by attending meetings, joining their events, volunteering, or donating to support their work to protect our waterways.
4. Wait to Do Your Laundry
If you live in area with a combined sewer system, help keep it from overflowing into our waterways by reducing water use during rainstorms. If it’s raining, consider doing your laundry, taking a long shower, or running your dishwasher another time.
5. Embrace the Pollen
‘Tis the season for yellow-green pollen-covered cars! If you need to wash your vehicle, take it to a carwash to help keep soap from running off into streams and harming aquatic life, or if you don’t mind a little pollen, you can wait for the rain to wash it away.
6. Advocate for Clean Water
Are there ways your neighborhood, apartment building, business, place of worship, or school could implement practices to protect clean water? Maybe they could install a rain garden, plant trees along a stream, switch to native landscaping, or create a community compost bin. What about legislation your local politicians could pass – or not pass – to protect our streams and rivers? If you see an opportunity to do more for clean water, advocate for it! Write letters, send emails, make phone calls, and help spread the word within your community.
7. Get to Know Your Farmer
Buy produce from farmers who practice regenerative, organic, or no-till agriculture. These practices can help prevent synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and eroded soil from entering waterways and can also help conserve water. Bonus points if you buy from local farmers who utilize these practices!
8. Rethink Your Lawn
Lawn fertilizers and pesticides can make our streams and rivers inhabitable to many fish and insects. In addition, lawns aren’t great at absorbing runoff, and they provide very little habitat for insects, birds, and other wildlife. Instead of a typical lawn, consider planting native species like wildflowers, shrubs, and trees. Native plants are better for wildlife, and they are better adapted to our soils and climate and don’t need the extra help of fertilizers!
9. Reduce Your Use of Disposable Products
What changes can you make to reduce your consumption of single-use plastics? You can drink from reusable bottles and cups and use metal or glass reusable straws. You can bring your own tote bags when you go shopping. You can even let your favorite companies know that you want them to stop using disposable plastic packaging. An estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic enter waterways each year, according to a Natural Resources Defense Council article, and at least 1,565 wildlife species have been found to have accidentally ingested plastic. Entanglement in plastic waste is another threat it poses to wildlife. On top of that, plastics never fully go away – they just break up into smaller and smaller pieces, which end up in our water and food. Researchers are still studying the impacts these microplastics may have when they end up in our bodies.
As a bonus, you can help keep litter out of our waterways by always disposing of waste in the proper receptacles, which includes not putting anything in the recycling bin that isn’t accepted by your recycling facility. And you can even go a step further by cleaning up litter that hasn’t been thrown away properly (like during the Project Clean Communities Water Week cleanup)!
10. Donate
Support the organizations working to protect clean streams and rivers in your community!
Join us for Lancaster Water Week from June 6-14, 2025 – there are over 60 events to participate in! Learn more and register at lancasterwaterweek.org/events.
