SEQUIM — The Clallam County Conservation District will commemorate its 50th anniversary Wednesday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Guy Cole Convention Center at Carrie Blake Park, 152 W. Cedar St.
“We’ll have a slide show and refreshments and talk about some of the ongoing efforts that we’re doing and what some of our challenges are,” said Joe Holtrop, district manager.
The celebration will help inform those who attend about the mission and work the district does, he said.
Cake will be served along with the information, and there will be time for questions from the public.
The organization was established in 1959 to help local land owners conserve local natural resources, Holtrop said.
Now the organization works in a variety of areas.
Some of the ongoing efforts include water conservation on the Dungeness River, in-stream flows, water quality and storm water management, he said.
Holtrop initiated a number of workshops to help educate and work with local landowners, he said.
“We work with landowners to teach about natural landscaping, and that reaches about 200 people a year,” he said.
The natural landscaping includes implementing rain gardens that help with stormwater management.
The workshops were started in 1990 and were implemented to encourage the use of native trees and shrubs, Holtrop said.
“Small farms continue to be a challenge for us mostly because of the water quality impacts with livestock keeping,” he said.
Holtrop was hired in 1989 through a partnership with the Jefferson County Conservation District.
He was the first full-time employee for the Clallam County district.
He now works exclusively for the Clallam County district, which also employs three full-time staff members and two half-time staffers.
The current budget of the organization is about $2 million and all but $26,000 that comes from Clallam County in the form of grants of one to three years, according to a news release from the conservation district.
The majority of the budget is used to help irrigation districts and companies implement improvements to their irrigation water conveyance systems.
The improvements are meant to conserve water and leave more water in the Dungeness River.
During the past nine years, more than $7 million has been contributed by the conservation district for such irrigation water conservation projects as replacing a total of about 30 miles of irrigation ditches with pipelines and building two irrigation reservoirs.
The organization estimates that bout 3,000 acre feet of Dungeness River is conserved through that effort every year.
