The City of Laredo is aggressively expanding its scope of services in the community. One way to address the rampant litter problem in the community is by educating the citizens of Laredo, with an emphasis on our youth, on the effects of litter, and the desperate need to foster stewardship.

In a massive effort to imprint good environmental habits to a population that is many times overlooked, the City of Laredo has initiated an extensive environmental education campaign, aimed at the youth in our community, with emphasis on water quality protection. The educational program consists of the following elements:

• Through a U.S./Mexico Border grant from the Enviromental Protection Agency, the Environmental Services Department continues to work on an initiative for all pre-school education children in Laredo Texas, as well as Laredo’s sister city across the river - Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The Los Dos Laredo’s Environmental Pre-School Education Project consists of producing new pre-school level environmental education material and gathering other pre-existing and available materials, and presenting the material by conducting several workshops on both sides of the Rio Grande, which will include all private and government funded day care provider entities and independent school districts. The goals are to bring awareness of non-point source pollution and its effects on our water quality, to provide pre-school educators with free environmental education materials and available web sites with easily downloadable material, and to form a bridge of communication and cooperation between environmental professionals and pre-school educators. The newly created packages will be provided by Laredo’s Environmental Services Department. This educational package includes a bilingual musical story book, describing the water cycle, littering control, and water quality pollution prevention activities performed by both cities. The material presents a fun and entertaining group of characters who tell the story at the level of the targeted 3-5 age group. The pre-existing environmental education material will be freely supplied from all bi-national governmental level entities, and will be freely available for the pre-school educator’s use in their classroom as part of their curriculum or as supplemental educational material.
• Another joint venture is between the City of Laredo’s Environmental Services Department, the Texas Watch Organization, Nvo. Laredo Mexico’s Sub-Secretaria de Ecología, Keep Laredo Beautiful Nonprofit Organization, and a number of high school level teachers and student volunteers from both local school districts. This EPA Border 2012 Grant funded project will be called the Los Dos Laredo’s Watershed Monitoring, Education, and Litter Cleanup Project. Representatives from both sides of the border(Laredo, Texas and Nvo. Laredo, Mexico) will receive watershed education and monitoring training, and they in turn will be training the educators and their participating students; so that they may conduct the watershed surveying and monitoring. Volunteers will be participating in clean up campaigns within their respective and previously determined city watershed monitoring point stations. Based on the enthusiastic response, promises, and pledge made by all participating parties, these two projects promise to be very successful.

Grant funds and other federal assistance will enable the Environmental Services Department to continue the environmental education program for an environmentally sustainable community. Re-establishing and funding the Environmental Justice grants, and increasing funding for Border 2012 grants.

Increase funding for Environmental Justice Grant programs.

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Justice and Border 2012.