Stream Team Leaders
Stream Team Leaders are neighborhood-based volunteers who function as the eyes and ears of a slice of the Rock Creek watershed. Leaders host cleanups and conservation activities (including those listed below), conduct outreach, and otherwise help to educate and promote the broader Rock Creek community around stewardship best practices. We work closely with the National Park Service and Montgomery County Parks to mobilize teams along the full 33-mile length of Rock Creek.
Upcoming Trainings
Individual Cleanups
Individual cleanups are just what they sound like: you, a trash bag, and picking up litter in whatever patch of the Rock Creek watershed means the most to you. We all need to take care and observe public health guidelines, but the work of stewarding Rock Creek and its parklands continues. Register here!
Please register your event with the Conservancy so we can show just how much you and your neighbors #LoveRockCreek.
Extreme Cleanup
Each April we celebrate Earth Month by hosting the Annual Rock Creek Extreme Cleanup. This project, which is part of the Alice Ferguson’s Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup, engages thousands of volunteers each year.
The Conservancy was thrilled by the success of the 2023 Extreme Cleanup event, and was so impressed by the enthusiasm and passion of the Rock Creek community coming together to restore Rock Creek. This people-powered restoration, hosted in partnership with Alice Ferguson Foundation as a part of their annual Potomac Watershed Cleanup, protects Rock Creek for all people to enjoy. Learn more.
The final numbers are in, and we’re so proud of the impact the Rock Creek community made through our collective Extreme Cleanup efforts in 2023:
30
cleanup events
623
volunteers
2,035
hours of service
7,995
lbs of trash and recycling removed
Water Quality Monitoring
The first step to helping Rock Creek is deepening our understanding of the conditions in the creek and its tributaries.
Through partnerships with other organizations, Conservancy volunteers take weekly samples from sites in the DC and Montgomery County sections of the Rock Creek watershed, and bring those samples to labs to be analyzed for bacteria concentrations, turbidity (the measurement of how clear the water is), and other parameters that provide us with data on the health of Rock Creek.
To find out more about any of the above opportunities, please click the contact us button.
Become a Water Quality Monitoring Citizen Scientist and gain hands-on experience collecting data and water samples throughout the District!
The District of Columbia Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) awarded a grant to Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay to continue the implementation of a DC-based citizen science water quality monitoring program with the goal of providing up-to-date, weekly water quality data to residents and visitors weekly.
Through partnerships with organizations such as Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Potomac Riverkeeper Network, and Anacostia Riverkeeper, Conservancy volunteers take weekly samples from sites in the DC and Montgomery County sections of the Rock Creek watershed. Those samples are then brought to labs to be analyzed for bacteria concentrations, turbidity (the measurement of how clear the water is), and other parameters that provide us with data on the health of Rock Creek. See the image above for a summary of last year's results and check out the Alliance's webpage for further information.