In today's world, you can adopt a highway and pick up litter, adopt a school and mentor children, even adopt a wild burro to give it a good home.

Now, Gov. Olene Walker is calling on fourth-graders to adopt "water bodies" — streams and lakes — in a statewide effort to improve water quality.

"It is my goal to provide for cleaner rivers and lakes," Walker said Monday at City Creek Canyon's Memorial House in Memory Grove, where she unveiled her "Watershed Initiative" before fourth-grade students from Jackson Elementary School.

"A watershed is where we keep all the water," Walker added. "We should call them 'lifesheds' because without them we couldn't exist."

Walker's plan focuses on 25 watersheds throughout the state. In the coming year, state environmental regulators will be coordinating activities with volunteers such as planting trees or stabilizing stream banks along the troubled waters.

Those waterways — featured on the Web site, www.adoptawaterbody.utah.gov. — include Hyrum Reservoir, Lower Little Bear River, Spring Creek, East Canyon Creek, Mill Creek, Cottonwood Wash and Deer Creek Reservoir.

"We're going to call them water bodies," Walker said. "We want people to adopt them," noting that in a year a report will be issued on how well the project is working.

Schools, individuals and businesses can adopt small sections of the waterways near their neighborhoods. In doing so, they can organize cleanup days, monitor water quality, write educational articles or organize a "Clean Water Fair."

"We want you to know how important water is," Walker told the students. "We want you to be familiar with this. . . . We hope that all of you will sign up and join Adopt-A-Water Body."

The initiative will be a great benefit for watershed managers throughout the state, said Jeff Salt, chairman of the Statewide Watershed Coordinators Council and executive director of the Salt Lake County Audobon Society. It will be especially helpful for watershed management on smaller rivers, such as the Sanpitch, Sevier, and Cub rivers.

"This is really great news to have the governor come out and support watershed protections," Salt said. "This is going to be great news for rural watersheds."

Dianne Nielson, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said education is the key to the initiative's success.

"All of you can make a difference," she told students. "Each of you can be a teacher. You can teach others what you learned and together we'll make a difference."

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