Concerned citizens took time out of their weekend on Saturday to learn how they can help the Indian River Lagoon as part of the Marine Resources Council’s National Estuary Day celebration at the Ted Moorhead Lagoon House in Palm Bay.

The event included a series of talks given by environmental experts with representatives also on hand from a number of environmentally-based organizations to answer questions from those who attended.

Sandy Brown, event organizer said, “We do have a good turnout and people, you know when they hear this topic, I mean it’s in the news a lot so the idea here is to empower people to be able to take action and make a difference themselves,”

One of those who spoke and discussed ways that people can make a difference at the celebration was Allison Arteaga, a volunteer events coordinator with Keep Brevard Beautiful who discussed their Lagoon Friendly Lawns Program.

Arteaga said “The whole idea of it is that we are involving both lawn care contractors and general residents, businesses, any land owners in nutrient pollution reduction practices to help benefit the Indian River Lagoon so we’re trying to reduce the amount of nutrients that are coming off of people’s lawns. Another aspect of it is that we’re trying to promote the use of native plants to help restore some of the ecosystem benefits that were lost,” .

Brown said of the workshop, which she said took attendees about an hour and a half to complete, “(The) workshop takes these and they attach faucets, they create openings in the top to attach to the downspouts of your gutter system so that the rain water falls off the house into the rain barrel and it can be re-used as landscaping water so it reduces the stormwater runoff into the lagoon” .

By Prakriti Neogi