The Santa Cruz River, Its People and Environment: A Binational Watershed Education Program

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It is said that nature knows no political boundaries, and this is clearly the situation with watersheds along the U.S.-Mexico Border region. The Santa Cruz River watershed, shared by Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, is a unique natural environment where the cultures and interactions of two very different nations coexist. It is in this setting that the program, Santa Cruz River, Its People and Environment (SCRIPE) was born.

SCRIPE is a public education program initiated as a result of community concern about the quality of the environment, with particular interest in public drinking water. The program was designed for teachers in Santa Cruz County and Nogales, Sonora, with the objective of providing them with background knowledge about their community through training in the science of water in Santa Cruz County.

A large portion of funding for SCRIPE comes from public agencies whose goal is to protect human health. For this reason, the program has a strand which addresses the link between public health and water. Nogales has limited water resources and clean water is the key to preserving and protecting public health; if that source becomes contaminated either by chemical or biological agents the community will be in serious trouble. What makes the issues more complicated is that the aquifer is shared by two countries; events on either side of the border can compromise the quality of water for both communities. A recent example was the derailment of train cars carrying sulfuric acid which ended in the Santa Cruz River in Mexico; since the water flows north into the U S at the location of the accident, it posed a serious threat to the community's water supply. Fortunately quick action by local officials averted a catastrophe.

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How they do it
SCRIPE is primarily a professional development program for teachers. Using the train the trainer model they are able to have far more impact than if they worked mainly with students. They also include other adult educators such as the community health workers (promatoras) and national park docents.

Participants join scientists and environmental educators in an exploration of this bi-national river watershed of limited water resources. By integrating three water education curricula into a place based instructional model, facilitators provide real life applicable academic activities correlated with local school district needs and state standards. The program focuses on environmental health education for the Santa Cruz River, and includes a field day for teachers where they learn about water and public health from the Santa Cruz County Public Health Office; visit the colonias and a private home in Mexico, as well as the waste water treatment plant, and the Nogales wash.

How it all started for SCRIPE
SCRIPE has its roots in the Well Head Protection Program, a water quality community based project funded by EPA in the mid 1990s. One of the components of this program was a public education committee. The community groups who supported this program determined that education was the key component to protecting the community's water source. A subcommittee of teachers from Nogales Unified School District was constituted to develop a curriculum written specifically for Nogales. The end result is Safe Drinking Water, A Bilingual Curriculum, a comprehensive K - 12 program which includes basic water concepts, the water cycle, the geology of water, conservation, water quality issues including sources of contamination, water and public health, the uses of water and issues specifically related to the community (including what happens when two countries share the same source of water).

In 2001 SCRIPE coordinator Cynthia Shoemaker and the Southeast Arizona Health Education Center (SEAHEC) received a grant from the Health Resources Services Administration. This grant was used to fund the first professional development program for teachers on how to use the Safe Drinking Water curriculum. At this time Kerry Schwartz, state coordinator for Project WET and Roy Simpson, a park ranger working in education at Tumacacori National Historical Park were invited to join as collaborators. They worked out a plan to integrate their three programs (Safe Drinking Water, Project WET, and The Santa Cruz River, Its People and Environment) into a series of five one day workshops plus three field trips.

The five workshops were arranged by theme including: History and Cultures of the Santa Cruz River Watershed, Natural History, Water Quality Issues and Public Health, Conservation, and Looking to the Future. Two of the field trips follow the course of the Santa Cruz River from where it starts in the Canelo Hills to where it flows into Mexico, and then follows its course in Mexico through San Lazaro where Mexican school children are doing water quality monitoring, revegetation and wild life counts, and through the historic town of Santa Cruz. The third field trip spends the day in Nogales, Sonora where participants get to see how other side of the border lives, and includes a visit to the International Waste Water Treatment Plant.

Accomplishments and lessons learned
In the past three years SCRIPE has trained approximately 50 teachers and 25 community health workers. These participants have taken what they have learned back into the schools and neighborhoods, educating at least 3,000 children and their families. University professors, graduate students, and state employed water professionals have all come to their programs to learn about water issues and the Santa Cruz Watershed.

SCRIPE is a collaborative effort with a mission which many people in the community feel is important: The protection of its limited water resources through education. It continues to adapt and evolve as new needs or interests are expressed. When the program first came into existence some of the best teachers in the county saw the opportunity it offered to them and decided to take advantage of it. Four years later many of these individuals are still involved through teaching their students, attending new workshop offerings, and volunteering to lead and organize their own.

SCRIPE and her coordinator, Cynthia Shoemaker, have received numerous awards and recognition for their work, including the Distinguished Teaching Award from the National Council for Geographic Education; a Stars in Education Award from the Arizona public schools superintendent, and special recognition from the Nogales Unified School District, the Arizona Association for Environmental Education, and Project WET.

Cynthia considers teachers to be the key to making this program successful at the local level, but recognizes that as time goes on it becomes more challenging to recruit individuals who are willing to spend the time it takes to go through the program and implement what has been learned in the classroom. The question being raised is, "what now needs to be done to attract more outstanding educators?" Other people in the community see the value and participate, why don't more teachers?

Collaboration is the word
SCRIPE works because of collaboration between many entities in the region, representing a wide array of community members. This includes the Santa Cruz County Public Schools, the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center, Tumacacori National Historical Park, as well as State and local agencies including the City of Nogales, Arizona Department of Water Resources, Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, and the Santa Cruz County Health Department. Funding and support is provided by the Health Resources Services Administration through the Mariposa Community Health Center, SEAHEC, the Santa Cruz County Public School Superintendent and the Arizona Geographic Alliance.

SCRIPE Facilitators are: Cynthia Shoemaker, Nogales Unified School District teacher, and Arizona Geographic Alliance Teacher Consultant; Kerry Schwartz, Education Program Coordinator, Water Resources Research Center, University of Arizona, and State Coordinator for Project WET; Roy Simpson, Park Ranger, Tumacacori National Historical Park, National Park Services.

Cynthia would like to thank their collaborators Kerry Schwartz and Roy Simpson, as well as County School Superintendent Robert Canchola; Mike Alcala of the Santa Cruz County Public Health Department, Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, and especially Karen Halverson and her staff at the Southeast Arizona Area Health Education Center.

We would like to thank Cynthia Shoemaker for sharing all the information needed for this article as well as all the images. For more information on SCRIPE, please contact Cynthia at cshoe@mindspring.com or go online to http://www.sccedu.org/scripe/

Click here for a list of future Professional Development Opportunities for Teachers from SCRIPE