April’s First Saturday Seminar will be held on April 5th. This month’s topic will be the conservation challenges posed by extended drought. Following a casual pancake breakfast at 8:30, the seminar will begin in earnest at 9:00 am with a showing of Troubled Waters: An Illusion of Abundance. This 1 hour documentary about the 2002 North Carolina drought was made by UNCW in 2003 and is narrated by former chancellor James Leutze. Though our current drought is certainly more severe than the events discussed in the film, it’s not inconceivable that there are some lessons to be learned from 2002. A panel/audience discussion will follow.

Panel members will tentatively be Dave Clark an Irrigation Contractor, Bill Hart – Director New Hanover County Soil and Water Conservation District, Dr. Larry Cahoon, UNCW Professor of Biology and Marine Biology and CFRW Board Member, and Philip Fragapane, Water Resource Engineer, NC DENR Division of Water Resources.

Cape Fear River Watch, City of Wilmington Stormwater Services and New Hanover County Soil & Water Conservation have been conducting interactive Enviroscape presentations for all New Hanover County 8th graders (about 1,700 students/year) for several years. We’re looking for additional volunteer instructors to help with this exciting program. An orientation/training for new volunteers will be held at our Surry St. Environmental Education Center on April 1st, from 7:00 to 8:30pm.

The NPS (nonpoint source) Enviroscape model currently used and 8th Grade Science curriculum requirements will be reviewed and the new, somewhat more complicated model will be demonstrated by Aimee Sloan of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service.

Contact Bill Murray (wmurray@cfrw.us or 297-2664) with questions or to RSVP. Not to offer a bribe or anything, but there is a very strong possibility of refreshments.

CFCC’s Hydrographic Surveying class used Greenfield Lake as a lab last month and produced what is likely the first subsurface map of the lake in . . . well, forever. It’s a great map. Who’d have thought that the relic stream meanders would still be so well defined some 200 years after the lake was first flooded? Thanks to Tim Shaw and his class for this image.

Audrey Albrecht

Sierra Club meets at the Cape Fear River Watch Environmental Education Center at 617 Surry St.

The formal meeting starts at 7:30pm, but come at 7:00 for coffee and cookies.

On Wednesday, March 12, Troy Alphin, Senior Research Associate in the Benthic Ecology Program at UNCW’s Center for Marine Science, will speak to PenderWatch at the Hampstead Library at 7:00pm. Alphin has been working with PenderWatch projects involving water quality testing, oyster spat set studies and possible oyster restorations in open and closed waters. He will speak on the importance of community involvement in assessing ecosystem health – with a focus on oysters.

PenderWatch welcomes visitors to their meetings.

Before coming to Wilmington and the Cape Fear Museum in 2005, Dr. Richardson was an Historian and Curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. She is also the author of various scholarly books and articles, most recently serving as co-editor of The Business of Tourism: Place, Faith and History.