FORT POLK, La. -- Many people never think about what goes down the drain down the street. Just water, right? Not necessarily. Anything that can be washed away with that water such as oil, fertilizers and other chemicals, litter and more can be a bad thing for local waterways. In an attempt to help make the Fort Polk community more aware about what flows down its storm water drains, Fort Polk Boy Scout Troop 124 partnered with Fort's Polk's Directorate of Public Works Environment and Natural Resources Management Division's storm water team for a community service project Dec. 1.

Scouts, 15 of them, and their parents volunteered to assist the storm water team with the "Drains to Streams, Storm Drain Labeling Project." This project is part of the outreach initiative under Fort Polk's Louisiana pollutant discharge elimination system municipal storm water permit to increase environmental awareness across the installation. The scouts labeled about 150 drains across the installation including areas along Mississippi Avenue, Colorado Avenue, Utah Street, Third Street and Corps Road. The labels, which were provided by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, caution "No Dumping, Drains to Streams." These labels are used to educate the public that storm water drains lead directly to local creeks and streams. The cooperative effort will hopefully discourage people from depositing anything down a storm drain that is not storm water. This project is the first of many programs that will come from the partnership between the storm water team and troop 124.