The Chiques Creek Watershed Alliance (CCWA) turns 25 this year, and the organization hopes to expand its public offerings to continue its mission of environmental stewardship. The group's first event of 2025 will be a Walk in the Park at Mummau and Logan parks. The walk will be held on Saturday, Feb. 1, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. and will begin at Mummau Park, 446-498 Chestnut St., Manheim.

"This is a great way to vanquish the winter blues or take a break from busy schedules," shared Paul Duncan, CCWA president. "Get out there in these lovely parks with friendly folks and appreciate the 'wild' in our backyards and learn something new. And by visiting the area when it is not thick with green vegetation, we'll be able to see and approach the Rife Run more easily."

Participants will walk on mowed grass, but, where possible, they will also step into the riparian buffer to see the condition of the banks and floodplain.

"We'll also have some design plans and old photos to compare with our observations," Duncan said.

The Walk in the Park is a newer event for CCWA, he noted. It provides a different way to promote community environmental fellowship.

"It gives us a chance to appreciate the riparian areas that are publicly accessible and spend a little time with some very nice people," Duncan commented. "We talk about why these areas are important and unique, identify where they might need help and share some local stories. We hope to go back to some of these sites in different seasons since the look and feel changes so much with seasons."

Last year, CCWA held walks that highlighted Little Chiques Park in Mount Joy, Iron Furnace Park in Marietta and Governor Dick Environmental Center in Lebanon County.

"It's a very pleasant way to spend an hour or two walking through these parks, learning something new and sharing stories," Duncan said.

The walk on Jan. 25 will be unique, he noted.

"Soon after incorporating in 2000, CCWA organized and led a restoration project in Mummau Park, with construction completed in 2003," he explained. "And after a change in leadership after about 2010, CCWA organized and led a restoration project in Logan Park. By looking closely at these areas now, we can remind ourselves what they were trying to fix in these restorations, ask how well the repairs have held up and ask whether we'd do anything differently in similar restoration projects now."

Joining participants on the walk will be David Bowne of Elizabethtown College as well as Reid Garner of Spring Hill Partners, who is also the vice president of CCWA. Bowne will highlight the science of the environments, and Garner will discuss how restorations are designed.

"We'll also talk about how these local projects fit in to the larger conversation about resilience to future intense weather events," Duncan said.

CCWA is a nonprofit organization focused on stewardship of the watershed through education, monitoring, maintenance and improvements in its waters and riparian environments. The Chiques Creek Watershed includes the land areas that drain into tributaries and streams that ultimately merge into the Chiques Creek and meet the Susquehanna River near Marietta.

"This includes Donegal Creek, Little Chiques Creek and Chiques Creek, and many tributaries," Duncan explained. "We partner with local municipalities and other organizations to hold events and meetings. And we are trying to move events and meetings around the watershed so we have a chance to better appreciate the full territory."

The organization's board of eight is made up of people with extensive volunteer, organization and/or related professional experience, and the group's membership includes people from both within and outside the watershed who are from the public, private and academic sectors.

The public is invited to participate in activities throughout the year, and the group is always looking for volunteers, Duncan said.

"One other change we're trying this year is to separate our organizational business meetings from what we're calling informational meetings on watershed-related topics of public interest," he stated. "We hope that the separate informational meetings will serve as a sort of public seminar and promote good discussion and better understanding of some complex topics. The first of these is coming up on Feb. 5, addressing multiple separate sewer systems (MS4), which has driven a lot of restoration/construction activity and regulation in our municipalities."

In everything it does, CCWA hopes to underscore how we all can be better stewards of the environment.

"CCWA really wants people to appreciate the environmental connections in their urban, agricultural and wild landscapes - connections that impact our resilience to weather events as well as figure into the value we place on clean water, clean recreational spaces and doing right for those that live downstream," Duncan said. "Each Walk in the Park, each conversation, gives us a chance to better understand these connections."

For more information on the Walk in the Park as well as upcoming CCWA events, visit http://www.chiquescreekwatershedalliance.org.