The Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence in Outreach and Education was presented to the Upper White River Watershed Alliance or UWRWA (of which the City of Noblesville is a member) to honor their extraordinary efforts for environmental public education and outreach. This award recognizes the UWRWA Clear Choices program which empowers Hoosiers to make personal, every day choices that result in cleaner, safer water.

"Noblesville can be very proud to be a key part of a regional effort to protect and improve our water resources for all the communities in the watershed," said Tim Stottlemyer, MS4 Program Manager for the City of Noblesville. "We all live downstream from someone and others live downstream from us, so we all depend on the same water to sustain our communities." 

            The UWRWA's Clear Choices Clean Water campaign is an ongoing pledge-based social marketing campaign aimed at increasing awareness about the impact individuals have on the quality of local waters. The UWRWA Clear Choices Clean Water campaign has already resulted in the prevention of 6.9 million gallons of untreated wastewater from reaching our streams and lakes each year through increased septic system maintenance. Likewise, individual residential pledges related to phosphorus-free lawn fertilizers, native plants and pet waste have led to the prevention of 113,440 pounds of the nutrient phosphorus from entering our waters. Preventing this amount of phosphorus subsequently prevents the production of over 51.5 million pounds of algae in our lakes and rivers.

 The Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence recognizes Indiana's leaders who have identified and implemented innovative environmental practices into their programs and facilities. The awards program celebrates efforts that implement exemplary environmental projects with measurable results.

Clear Choices Clean Water pledges can be made to pick up pet waste, maintain septic systems, use phosphorus free fertilizers, and plant native plants as part of local landscapes at www.ClearChoicesCleanWater.org.  The online pledge system is supported by dozens of resources on the interactive website (www.ClearChoicesCleanWater.org) as well as Facebook promotions and the use of traditional promotional postcards, radio, TV and billboards campaigns.