Clean water volunteer programs
You can help protect and clean Kelowna’s waterbodies through the Adopt-a-Stream and Yellow Fish Road programs.
The Adopt-a-Stream program gives organizations, families, individuals, clubs and community groups an opportunity to help keep Kelowna’s streams healthy. Groups can pledge to help our streams by:
- Picking up litter and debris
- Removing noxious weeds
Healthy streams, even very small ones, are an asset to our community. Streams and stream corridors provide 85 per cent of our wildlife species with habitat, plus valuable spawning and rearing areas for fish. They affect our drinking water and have a large influence on our recreational water quality.
For information on the program or to volunteer to adopt a stream, please contact the Parks office at 250-469-8503. If there are no streams available, you can ask to be placed on a wait list.
Participants will be required to sign a consent form:
- Organization adopt a portion of a stream for at least two years. The minimum requirements include picking up litter along the stream a minimum of once a year, but preferably twice.
- We supply kits that contain garbage bags, gloves and garbage pickers. Kits can be picked up from Park Services, 1359 KLO Rd.
- Once the first clean-up has been completed, we will install and maintain an Adopt-a-Stream sign, displaying the name of the active group volunteering in the area
Thank you to our 2022 participants!
- 4th Naitaka Girl Guides
- ARC Programs
- Ballina Landscape
- BC Geocaching Association
- Brandt’s Creek Girl Guides
- Central Okanagan Naturalists Club
- City Of Kelowna Waste Water
- Crosby Organics
- ECOSCAPE Environmental Consultants Ltd.
- Earth and Environmental Science Course Union - UBCO
- Four Points by Sheraton Hotel – Kelowna Airport
- Friends of Ayre Ave
- Girl Guides of Canada - Layer Cake Mountain District
- Green Step Solutions
- Grime Busters
- Interior Savings Glenmore
- Kelowna Geocachers
- Kelowna Sunrise 4H Multiclub
- Manteo Resort
- Mission Lions Club
- Okanagan Christian School
- Pathways Abilities Society
- RONA
- Schwarz Family
- Simpson Realtors
- Stantec
- Tetra Tech
- Urban Systems
- Wild Church
We have partnered with Trout Unlimited Canada to promote the Yellow Fish Road™ (YFR) program.
The Yellow Fish Road™ program is a hands-on environmental project for people to help decrease water pollution in their communities. Yellow Fish Road™ volunteers paint yellow fish symbols next to storm drains and distribute fish-shaped brochures to nearby households and businesses, reminding people that anything that enters the storm drain systems goes directly into the local waterbody.
In most cities, storm drains connect directly to the local waterbody, untreated. This untreated water is caused by non-point source pollutants entering the local water body from different sources such as waste, salt, soap, oil, fertilizer and pesticides that run off lawns, sidewalks and driveways.
These pollutants can have a negative impact on the aquatic ecosystem by harming fish and wildlife, while also reducing water quality for humans.
For more information on the program or to book a kit, please contact the Parks office at 250-469-8503.
Participants will be required to sign a consent form:
