It’s Green Week in Arizona, and some clean-water plants are borrowing a page from the fire department with special educational events, according to an article in the East Arizona Courier newspaper.

You remember Fire Prevention Week? When you were a kid, chances your fire department sent a hook-and-ladder truck to your school and firefighters showed how it worked, ran the ladder up and down sounded the siren. In our school, we once had an assembly where a firefighter showed, inside a glass tube, how fast fire spreads where gasoline is involved.

So, after Governor Jan Brewer proclaimed Feb. 3-7 as Arizona Green Week 2014, the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) scheduled events to mark the occasion in the communities of Fort Thomas and Thatcher. On Tuesday and Wednesday of that week, fifth and sixth graders from local schools learned about wastewater reclamation by touring the Safford Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Mt. Graham Golf Course, where the treated water is used for irrigation.

It was one of a number of activities held by the DEQ to encourage students to become environmental stewards, the newspaper reported. Other events were held in Heber-Overgaard, Lake Havasu City, Tucson, and Yuma.

And what about clean-water plants where the DEQ is not sponsoring activities? Green Week is a great opportunity for operators to do what the firefighters do: Use the special week as a reason to promote their message about the importance of their profession. It’s a way to advance the aims of The Fire Chief Project:
• Raise clean-water professionals to the status of the fire chief.
• Make kids grow up wanting to be clean-water operators.