‘Everything water’: Jacobs Creek Watershed Association hosts 5th Headwaters Party

To Denise Wilkins, the Jacobs Creek Watershed Association is all about “everything water.”

First assembled in the 1960s and reformed as a nonprofit organization in the late 1990s, the JCWA stewards 177 miles of streams from the Laurel Highlands to the Youghiogheny River.

Wilkins soon will enter her third year as executive director of the association.

The nonprofit’s primary goal in the 1960s was to address flooding in the surrounding towns, but now it offers watershed education and recreation opportunities to the community.

“We clean (the watershed) with our grants, and then we educate people about it,” said Wilkins of Mt. Pleasant. “And then the recreation part of it is to get people out on it.”

That is what the JCWA hopes to accomplish with its fifth annual fundraiser, which it calls the Headwaters Party.

The event will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. Saturday at Maple Bottom Farm in Dawson. There will be a farm-to-table buffet consisting of food and beverages from Espey’s Meat Market, Christner’s Farm, Maple Bottom Farm, Bella Terra Vineyards and Helltown Brewing.

The bluegrass Hickory Bottom Band will perform, and attendees can donate to the JCWA through a direct donation or by participating in a basket raffle.

After a hiatus in 2020, the event returned last year and has begun to build attendance back to its heyday.

JCWA Program Coordinator Alex Busato said the nonprofit is aiming for 120 attendees and $3,000 raised, although, as of now, they are expecting about 100 visitors.

According to Busato of Scottdale the association hopes to make this year’s event similar to the peak of success achieved in the 2018 fundraiser.

“This year is more of a return to form to how we did it in 2018,” Busato said. “We’re hoping to make it even better than that if we can.”

Although the JCWA uses state and federal grant money for its larger projects, Busato said money raised through donations serves a particularly important purpose for the nonprofit.

Busato said the association has 75 to 100 members and an annual operating budget of $100,000. The Richard King Mellon Foundation provides about $60,000 annually, and most of the remaining $40,000 comes from grants. But donations and membership dues allow the JCWA to offer recreation and education opportunities to the community for free or at a reduced cost.

“This kind of money doesn’t have strings attached, and it lets us be more creative,” Busato said. “It’s a small amount, but we’re a small organization, so $3,000 can make quite a big difference throughout the course of the year.”

Busato said the fundraiser allows the JCWA to branch into the community.

“It’s just a nice opportunity to bring the community together to host a thing,” he said. “People enjoy it, and ultimately, as a nonprofit, that’s sort of what our goal is. We want to get money so we can do things throughout the rest of the year, but we also want to give people something to do.”

The JCWA will host its regular pop-up paddling event for the community to practice canoeing and kayaking from 8 a.m. to noon on Aug. 8 and 1 to 5 p.m. Aug. 17. A fishing derby will be held from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Aug. 20, and the next tire cleanup is scheduled for October.

Additional details for the JCWA’s upcoming events will be posted on its Facebook page.