(Arnolds Park)– A new event highlighting the importance of water quality will be held this weekend in the Iowa Great Lakes. The “Boji Clean Water Jam” gets underway Friday evening with some seminars Saturday and a concert that evening at Preservation Plaza. David Bernstein, one of the organizers, says it’s a new twist on a similar event that was held in the past…
“Myself and Jason Walsmith really wanted to keep this kind of thing going with the park as well with Jon and everybody over at Arnolds Park, so we worked together to initially plan a concert with “Better Than Ezra” and “The Nadas” will be the special guests that night. Looking forward to that, but we also wanted to put some teeth behind it with a few events. We won’t be having, as the prior event did in the past, we won’t be having booths or kid’s activities out in the green space during the day this year.”
Bernstein says Friday evening’s event will consist of a screening two short films titled “What’s Eating Iowa” featuring Art Cullen at the Pioneer Theatre in Milford…
“And Art will be there to intro the movies and have some discussion relating to the films and the making of the films as well. Art’s an Pulitzer Prize winner for a lot of his work he did in covering the story relating to the Des Moines River and the nitrates that were in the Des Moines River.”
The opening seminar at 10:30 am Saturday features Dr. Larry Weber, a hydrologist from the University of Iowa who will address the importance of water monitoring programs…
“It’s important in a very non-partisan way to do that, to gather facts. So Dr. Weber will be coming in to speak about that with a focus on northwest Iowa and then after Dr. Weber will be “The Lobe Rangers” who are a group of three professional farmers who are trying to find answers on how to do things to minimize water damage and pollution but still be practical, profitable farmers. They have a lot to add, they’re great characters and want to have a discussion on that level.”
Bernstein says they’re planning to make the “Boji Clean Water Jam” an annual event…
“We put this together relatively quickly and we really appreciate the support and promise that we’ll definitely build upon this and get it out there more in advance than we did this year for sure, but we wanted to keep something going. We were offered the date at the park. We just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to keep a focus on water quality. It’s so important for all of us.”
All of the events Friday and Saturday are free of charge. You can see the complete schedule of events here.
