By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
In just the first hour of the free two-hour event, the World Water Day Fun Fest at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History saw nearly 250 children and adults tour the multiple hands-on exhibits, demonstrations, and fun activities.
This year's event was held Tuesday during what is spring break for Hays USD 489, Hays Catholic schools and Fort Hays State University. Even though classes weren't in session, it was filled with lots of learning about water quality and water quantity.
The Water Fest sponsors, City of Hays Water Resources Dept. and the KSU Kanopolis Lake/Big Creek/Middle Smoky Hill River watersheds, were helped out by volunteers at each activity booth.
One of those many volunteers was Ellis County 4-H Water Ambassador Marisa Wasinger of the Good Hope Club. She is one of the four original 4-H2O Ambassadors in the program that started three years ago.
Wasinger is now a Hays High School sophomore and it wasn't that long ago she was one of the wide-eyed young attendees at the annual Water Fest.
"I really like it," Wasinger said of her ambassadorship. "It's given me lots of opportunities for public speaking and leadership skills. I've also met a lot of people I never would have otherwise."
Although ambassadors already, the small group is still growing and they keep on learning.
" We also go on a lot of trainings and tours where we just learn about water and how it functions in Hays and in our county."
At the Water Fest, Wasinger kept busy helping at several informational booths, including a crowd favorite, "Freddy the Fish."
"It's just teaching kids about what can contaminate the water and then make Freddy the Fish sad."
Being able to see contaminates surround Freddy helps the kids better understand the importance of water quality, Wasinger said.
Chocolate syrup is dripped into a plastic container where Freddy the Fish (made of sponge) lives, representing animal manure. Green food dye is agricultural and residential fertilizer. There's even some pretend rubber poop pellets for animal waste. It's all topped off with empty snack bags and trash floating on the water.
"A lot of things that show up in our own Big Creek. It really shows kids that live here what they're doing. They can see how the water gets dirty and gross and makes the fish gross," Wasinger said.
In another area of the museum lobby, kids and adults alike were expressing surprise when they spotted microbes moving on slides of contaminated water, in a demonstration by Jason Riegel, Hays Water Reclamation and Reuse superintendent.
"When you're younger, you don't really think about water. You don't realize [its importance,]" Wasinger remembers. "But by seeing [these demonstrations], they realize what they do has an effect on what our environment has.
"They're always really surprised to see just what some of the normal things they do really affect our environment.
Ellis County and Hays rely on groundwater mostly from alluvial (shallow) aquifers around the Smoky Hill River and Big Creek, which flow near the city.
