Kids & Family

High Praise for Keep Forsyth County Beautiful's Kevin Smith

KFCB Community Outreach Specialist named the Georgia Adopt-A-Stream program Trainer of the Year and recognized for his passion for improving the waterways of Forsyth.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources Environmental Protection Division has passed this along:

On March 22, 2014, volunteers and local government agencies from across the state were honored for their efforts to improve Georgia’s waterways at Confluence, Georgia Adopt-A-Stream’s annual conference.

The conference was held at the Gwinnett Environmental and Heritage Center in Buford, and award winners were recognized at the awards ceremony.

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As the statewide volunteer water quality monitoring program, Georgia Adopt-A-Stream is dependent on forming strong partnerships with local volunteers to help fulfill its goals. Each of the 2013 winners demonstrated efforts that exemplified these goals, including promoting an awareness of nonpoint source pollution, collecting baseline water quality data and creating partnerships.

Georgia Adopt-A-Stream (AAS) relies heavily on the support of its local trainers and community coordinators to engage citizens by conducting certification workshops and to be a continuous point of contact for the Program.

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With over 50 active trainers in 2013, our trainers helped to conduct over 340 workshops with over 3700 certifications in our QA/QC monitoring programs.

In recognition of our outstanding trainers that have gone above and beyond in promoting our goals, we would like to recognize our Trainer of the Year, Kevin Smith. Kevin works for Keep Forsyth County Beautiful as a Community Outreach Specialist and has been an active AAS trainer since 2006 being certified in our chemical, bacterial and macroinvertebrate monitoring programs.

He led 44 workshops, certifying over 800 volunteers in 2013 alone. Kevin’s enthusiasm for his work overflows as he shares his passion for improving the waterways of Forsyth County.

He engages young adults and children through partnering with Forsyth County School System and the local Boy Scout organizations. Kevin works hard to make the Adopt-A-Stream program available to everyone that wants to join by holding workshops after normal working hours and on weekends.

He also is a great resource for his volunteers after the workshop, answering questions about sampling or about their results and ensuring that they have all of the necessary equipment for monitoring. On behalf of the Georgia Adopt-A-Stream Program, thank you Kevin for your dedicated efforts to improve Georgia’s waterways.


Adopt-A-Stream encourages individuals and communities to monitor and improve sections of streams, wetlands, lakes or estuaries. The goals of Adopt-A-Stream are to increase public awareness of the State’s nonpoint source pollution and water quality issues, provide citizens with the tools and training to evaluate and protect their local waterways, encourage partnership between citizens and their local government and collect quality baseline water quality data. To obtain more information or to participate in Adopt-A-Stream or Confluence, call the Environmental Protection Division’s Adopt-A-Stream State Coordinator at 404-463-1464 or visit our website: www.GeorgiaAdoptAStream.org.


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