Mckenzie:
Hi, folks. I'm McKenzie VanMeerhaeghe, and this is Water You Talking About? A podcast brought to you by WaterOne, where we talk about the ins and outs of all things water. Today we're talking about our education and outreach program. We will explore the origins of both our education and outreach program. See where you can find us this summer and hear directly from our outreach staff. Let's dive into it.
It takes many different hands to make our education and outreach programs so special. So in this episode, we are going to be talking with several special guests. We will start off by talking with the creator of our education outreach program, Kelly Fry. She will be introducing us to a brand new water one team member who will be taking over the program this summer. And then we will get into the specifics of our Quench buggy with fleet expert Scott Bundy. Joining us first is communications manager Kelly Fry. Hi, Kelly. How are you doing today?
Kelly:
I'm doing great. Happy to be here.
Mckenzie:
Yeah, well, it's officially May and you know what that means. It's time for outreach season to begin! Speaking of beginnings, when did we start the outreach program?
Kelly:
The outreach program started back in 2016 when I was newly here at WaterOne. I had the privilege of really exploring how we could connect with our community. And back then, there really wasn't a lot of city events. So I have really had to dig around and see what kind of events we could go to, where we would reach our customers, and what kinds of things we would talk to customers about. So it was really fun. We went to the Johnson County Home and Garden Show for many years. Local touch a truck events where we had some of our field guys bring a mall vac truck and let kids climb in it. And then we went to local farmers markets to remind people that our tap water is delicious. And our goal was really to connect with people, let them ask any questions about their water, and demystify the water that's coming out from your faucets. There and just kind of connect with folks. So we had to start small. It was just a team of one. Aka me. And, it was really fun, those beginnings to kind of see how we could connect with people and what common questions customers had. And we really used that as an exploration to build our outreach program on for years to come.
Mckenzie:
And how many events do we attend a year now?
Kelly:
So currently we do about 20 to 25 events per year.
Kelly:
We could probably do 100, but we have to limit it. Staffing is still small, our communications team, and so we want to make sure it's manageable and that we're able to provide the best experience that we can for customers. So we currently limited to 25.
Mckenzie:
What specifications do events need to meet to request our quench buggy?
Kelly:
our quench buggy as our most popular outreach item. It is our mobile hydration station. I wish we could go to every single event that we get a request for, but in order to manage the program with the current staff levels, it's really important to put in requirements and limits to the events that we do attend. For example, in order for us to consider our event for the Quench buggy, your event must occur in our service area.
We are very lucky that our neighbors in KCMO have a similar hydration station in their service area. So we really collaborate and when we have folks that have Kansas City, Missouri events, we happily send them to KCMO water and they can help them with their events there and vice versa. So the event dates also need to be between May 10th and November 15th. Why are those specific dates? Because the quench buggy has small water hoses inside of them that can freeze. So we actually winterize her throughout the winter months because just like pipes in your home, we do not want any, frozen pipes to break inside of the quench buggy. We also have an expected attendance minimum for these events.
The quench buggy provides so much drinking water to attendees. Going to an event with ten people isn't really a good use of our of our resource there, so we really need the event to be at least 500 participants to make the quench buggy worth it. And because the quench buggy is so large, we really try to choose the largest events. That's really the purpose. We have smaller tabletop water dispensers for smaller events, but the quench buggy is really meant for those large scale events. We also like it when the event is within 100ft of a water spigot. So we give preference to those events.
Mckenzie:
And in addition to our quench buggy, we also have our mascot, Misty, who comes to some outreach events. Could you talk about her a little bit?
Kelly:
Yes, I love Misty. When I was tasked with creating a new mascot, I was thrilled. The old mascot was named water Willy, and it was a mascot developed by a national water association. I believe in the, like, 50s.
Mckenzie:
Wow.
Kelly:
really old mascot. We're talking almost 70 years later. We got to develop a new mascot, so it's very exciting. Many utilities across the country all used water Willy and I wanted us to stand out. I wanted us to have something new. I wanted a modern take. And being a woman in a Stem career, I wanted it to be a girl. I wanted little girls at events to come right up to her and connect to water careers with a woman. So Misty was born with her pink Mary Jane shoes and all to welcome all of our customers at our events.
Mckenzie:
Misty is so great. I love her so much. Her pink Mary Jane's are so cute and it's so amazing to see all of the little kids get to come up to her at events and interact with her. It's such a rewarding experience to see, and I'm so glad that she's a part of our team.
Kelly:
Me too. so just like the quench buggy, Misty could go to every single event. But we do have a few things that make it a little difficult for her to do that. So she is made of a felt materials. So it gets very hot for any staff member that is portraying Misty and getting inside the Misty. Costume. So we mostly use her for indoor air conditioning events. So if you have any event that's indoors that you would like Misty to come to, definitely reach out and let us know.
Mckenzie:
So why do we prioritize outreach specifically at water one?
Kelly:
It's actually baked into our strategic goals that guide our work every day. Goal number two is to provide excellent customer service. And one of the ways we do that is providing education and outreach through our innovative communication tools.
Goal number seven is to be good stewards of the environment. And we do that by promoting efficient water use and fostering an educated, aware and engaged community, Connecting with our customers is important. We know folks are busy and water is often taken for granted. We want to be present at our events so our customers can come by, say hello, and just ask any water related questions they may have.
Mckenzie:
100% water one is committed to increasing awareness about the value and quality of tap water and critical customer interests. We want our community to know that we hear them and that we care. We are a part of the community that we serve, and we are dedicated to helping make our community thrive.
This summer, we are attending many exciting events. We cannot wait to see everyone out and about. Some events you may find us out. The summer will be part the Chicken run at Deanna Rose, several Moonlight Markets and the Shawnee Mission Triathlon, as well as the OPP Fall Fest. Those are only a few of the many events that we are attending though, so keep an eye out because we will be at so many more. And who knows, maybe we'll even get to see Misty out and about the summer.
In addition to getting out in the community, we also get into the classroom. Our education program is something that is very near and dear to our hearts here at water one. Kelly, can you talk a little bit more about this?
Kelly:
Sure. So I created our education program in 2016 and I was so thrilled to do this. Personally, I find that it's pivotal for people to connect with their environment. They have to know where water comes from to care about it. Every day you open your faucet, it's there If you don't realize that that water is coming from a local river stream, or aquifer, then you're not going to connect with that, and you're not going to understand and appreciate the value of that water. So I was very excited to go into schools and teach kids that connection and hopefully help them build that relationship with their local environment.
The first thing I did was reach out to both Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley school districts, and Blue Valley School District had a science curriculum. professional that brought me in. And I actually met with all of the science teachers in sixth grade. I went to one of their workshops and we together built this curriculum for their students.
So it was very exciting. I am not a teacher. I can definitely speak on environmental and water topics. That's what my background is in. But it was very helpful to have teachers really help fine tune those messages in a way where students could really resonate and learn from them.
Mckenzie:
Absolutely. It's wonderful that you got to work directly with the teachers to curate this program in a way that would be most impactful for our students. So what schools are we able to use this program in?
Kelly:
So we go to any school located in our service area. The program itself is targeted towards sixth graders in Blue Valley and Shawnee Mission school districts, but we do good to go to private schools and other classrooms as well. One thing I want to make sure teachers know is that our program is free, so all you have to do is call and email us and schedule it, and we take care of the rest.
Mckenzie:
And can you dive a little bit more about what we teach in this program?
Kelly:
Sure. So our main goal is for students and teachers to walk away from the program knowing where their water comes from and how much work it takes to produce clean, delicious drinking water. We give an overview of our water treatment process. Then we do water quality test on tap water versus bottled water.
Spoiler alert the main difference is pH. Tap water is more alkaline than bottled water, and over 50% of bottled water is just repackaged tap water. So these are all things we talk about with students.
Mckenzie:
And why do we choose six grades specifically for this program?
Kelly:
We chose sixth grade due to the suggestion by Blue Valley Science Coordinator in sixth grade, students are learning about the human impact on the planet and knowing where their drinking water comes from. Using the next generation standards we accomplish meeting that goal for teachers and the students.
Mckenzie:
So if there are any teachers who are interested in our education program, how can they reach out to us?
Kelly:
Please email our new education coordinator, Tayler Loudermill, and she can coordinate a date and get you on our schedule for the 2025 2026 school season. You can read more on our website at waterone.org/outreach.
Mckenzie:
And again, that is waterone.org/outreach. This link and all others mentioned throughout the episode will be listed in both our description and the transcript.
On a more personal level, why do you find teaching students about the water treatment process so rewarding?
Kelly:
I think the most important thing we can do is connect people with their local environment. Not only is it important for your mental health, but it's what makes us part of this planet. How can you care about your home environment if you aren't connected with it?
Water is one of the things we need to survive. We can all have different houses, we can eat different food, but we all need water. It's the one thing we can connect to our local environment no matter what. And I love making that connection for folks and seeing them become passionate about our local rivers.
Mckenzie:
Oh, I absolutely love to hear that. It's so great to know that behind all of these programs that Water one offers are real people with real passions to genuinely help the community that we're all a part of.
In other extremely exciting news. We have a new member here at Water One who will be managing our education and outreach program. Kelly, why don't you introduce our new member?
Kelly:
I will be so happy to. So I am very excited to introduce our new communications specialist, who will be managing our education and outreach program. Tayler Loudermill. We are thrilled to have her talents on our communications team and watch our programs thrive.
Mckenzie:
Hi, Tayler, it's so nice to have you on our team. Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
Tayler:
Yeah, McKenzie, so I'm a hornet at heart. So stingers up. First of all, I got my bachelor's from Emporia State, and then I taught sixth grade social studies for a few years. After that, I worked in learning and development for a couple of years, and I decided to go back and get my master's of organizational communication at KU. So I'm also a Jayhawk, too. And now I'm here. And officially I've been here for one month.
Mckenzie:
Congratulations on being here for one month. And what is your role at Water one?
Tayler:
Thank you. So I am a communications specialist and as Kelly said, I am in charge of education and outreach.
Mckenzie:
And what does that look like?
Tayler:
Well, I have inherited the 212 from Jerry. So I will be doing interviews and articles to help keep employees up to date on what's going on at water one. I will also be in charge of community outreach, so all the events we table at or bring the quench buggy to. With the help of volunteers, we will be educating the community on water one and important topics like frozen pipes. The last part is education. We'll be starting up the school programs again for the year, where I will be going to various sixth grade classrooms in our service area, and we'll talk about water one and how we make our great tap water and do different experiments with them.
Mckenzie:
And what do you love most about your work?
Tayler:
First, I love that I get to work with kids again. I'm very excited to step back into sixth grade classrooms with a whole new role. Secondly, I love all the experiences that I'm getting at water one. McKenzie, you've taught me a lot about social media. Jerry has taught me a lot about photography and videography, and Kelly has helped me a lot with graphic design. I'm super grateful to be part of such a well-rounded team.
Mckenzie:
Well, we are super happy to have you here, and thank you so much for being here today and introducing yourself to our community. We are so excited to get to see you out and about this summer.
After this, we are going to talk with the administrative coordinator for Fleet and Building Services, Scott Bundy. So stay tuned.
Scott works in the Fleet Department as an administrative coordinator, and he assist us with the mechanical side of our crunch buggy. Now, Scott is an absolute expert when it comes to the quench buggy, so I am super happy to get to speak with him today. Hi, Scott. How are you doing?
Scott:
I'm doing great. How are you, McKenzie?
Mckenzie:
I'm great. I do want to dive a little bit more into you, who you are and what you do. Since this is your first appearance on the Water You Talking About podcast? So how long have you been working at Water One?
Scott:
I just celebrated my ten year anniversary on March 15th.
Mckenzie:
Congratulations. That's a milestone. It is. Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
Scott:
My background is kind of far and varied. I started out in telecommunications when I was in my early 20s. I got laid off from sprint along with several thousand other people in 2001. I went into property management as a kind of what do I do between now and next?
And then I started working for Garmin. Worked for them for several years and, again, fell victim to their only layoff that they've ever had. I have always I kind of fell back on driving limousines. I did that when I was much younger, and I ended up, driving limousines while I tried to go back to school for a while, And then that worked into dispatch, and then it worked into me working in the office at the Limousine Service. And then when the owner's wife, got pregnant with their first child, they asked me to take over the business. And I ran it for several years until the opportunity to come to water. One came and I came here.
Mckenzie:
Fabulous. So what might a typical day for you look like here?
Scott:
So a typical day for me, starts at about 7:00 Am or earlier. I am responsible for all three of our internal fueling sites, so I make sure that all those downloaded their transactions properly and address any errors. A typical day can involve anything from assisting one of our staff members with repairing a vehicle or a piece of construction equipment, assisting in the purchasing process. Once we purchase a vehicle, I'm the person that puts it in the system and coordinates getting it through the shop to get it up and running. And, you know, for whatever use, we're going to use it for. Then when we after we have done, you know, after a vehicle's used, we've used it for many years of service. I'm the one that pulls it and gets it ready to sell and ultimately post it up on the gov Deals website to sell it. I work with our insurance coordinator. If anyone should have an accident or a vehicle should be involved in damaged and getting it repaired.
I help our custodial side by, you know, being helping them with purchasing chemicals and cleaning solutions or what have you. I kind of I assist Kelly with the the logistical side of the quench buggy and, I absolutely love helping you guys with that. So.
Mckenzie:
Perfect. And what do you love most about your work?
Scott:
It can vary from one day to the other. It's never the same. What I do on Tuesday will be completely different from Wednesday. Each unit, each problem that comes into our department is unique and different. Some is a simple fix, some requires renting vehicles, some requires renting instruction equipment. It's just I never know from one day to the next when I walk in, I don't feel like I do the same thing day in and day out. There's a couple tasks that I have to do every day, but I don't honestly feel like I do the same thing every day. So which is always fun.
Mckenzie:
Yeah, it's always refreshing to have a variety in the work that you do. I always love hearing about what people love about their work. It's such an amazing experience to see how many people really love and care about what they do. And I think it shows in the work that you and people at Water One put out. Definitely. Well, okay, now let's dive into the quench buggy. Okay, first of all, what is the quench buggy or big blue, as we affectionately call her?
Scott:
Big blue is kind of a very unique vehicle. As far as I know. She is one of about seven custom made vehicles. Kelly purchased Big Blue in 2019 from a company in Canada called McKee technologies. He, made farm implements and farm trailers, and he had the idea for a mobile hydration station. She researched it, found it. She was able to do custom graphics on the side. The concept is few and far between. There's there's only a few of them in the entire country. And whenever we bring it out to an event, everyone is always thrilled to see it. They're thrilled that we're there with cold, fresh tap water and, you know, ready to keep people hydrated.
Mckenzie:
Absolutely. How much water does she hold?
Scott:
she can hold? 800 gallons.
Mckenzie:
Wow.
Scott:
We can either connect to a hose spigot. We have food grade hose on board. We can connect to a hose spigot, which is the preferred way, because pulling 800 gallons of water is not an easy task. And then she has to be connected to power also.
Mckenzie:
And we also utilize the quench buggy outside of our outreach program. Can you talk a little bit more about this?
Scott:
she was purchased for outreach, but we also use it. We've used it in the past when we've had to shut off water to an entire neighborhood. We've used the Johnson County alert system to let people know that, you know, hey, we're bringing water out that you can use. You can grab a drink, you can fill a bottle, whatever. And we brought her out to areas where we've had to do a maybe scheduled outage for an entire day so that we are not leaving people high and dry, so to speak.
We have also used her in an emergency situation when we had the tornado up in Lynnwood, Kansas, a few years ago. And there was a large amount of destruction. We went ahead and came up with the quench buggy full of water so that we could we were on site that first day when they were trying to get Service Connect reconnected, and we were on site for folks. We were near the Red cross so that, you know, we could provide fresh, clean tap water to the tornado victims. Thankfully, we've only had to use it the one time, but we had her to use her.
Mckenzie:
Yeah. So it's good to know that we have that resource in case we ever do need her. And recently we have been using our Ford Lightning and outreach events. Can you talk a little bit about the impacts of using an electric vehicle?
Scott:
This is one of the I'm a big proponent of electric vehicles. Water one just started purchasing electric vehicles in 2023. Matter of fact, the lightning is that we used to pull the quench. Buggy is the very first F-150 lightning that we bought. It's a 2023 Ford Pro Lightning. It can hold. It can charge, get 220 miles out of a charge. It's just a standard. It's a standard range truck. We like using it because Big Blue does have an electric component. And typically we use her in places where we can plug her into an outlet. The prior to having the lightning, we can use the Ford Pro Power option, which allows us to plug Big Blue directly into our lightning and we can power off the lightning.
So prior to that, we were actually hauling a generator around. So this is much easier using the lightning. It's great that we are keeping our carbon emissions low or zero in this situation. And we're not we're using stored power instead of generated power or using someone else's power to operate Big Blue when she's out in the public.
Mckenzie:
Yeah, 100%. It's such an amazing asset that we were able to have on our hands. Yes it is. Is there anything else about the quench buggy that you'd like to the public to know about?
Scott:
You know, the quench buggy makes people smile. It's always fun when we're at an event to see the kids come up and, you know, be able to get a drink of water because, you know, when you're a kid, getting a drink of water out of the water fountain is kind of fascinating. You know, when we're out an event, we always make sure that we have dog bowls so that we can feed your furry friend. We can hydrate your furry friends, too. So come and look for us at any of the events on our event page.
Mckenzie:
Yeah, absolutely. That is amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Scott. We truly appreciate all the work you do here at Water One.
Scott:
Well thank you, McKenzie. It's been an honor to be here.
Mckenzie:
thank you so much to all of our staff who volunteer in our community by doing these outreach events. This program would not be successful without all of their hard work and dedication. Well, that's today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in today. As always, I encourage you to share this podcast with all of your friends and family if you are interested in anything we talked about in this episode, please visit our education Outreach page at Waterone.org/outreach. This link is also listed in the description and the episode transcript.
Our next episode will be about main breaks. Learn all about the science of main breaks, how we fix them, and so much more. Thank you for listening and I'll see you next time on. Water You Talking About?