Latane Donelin (Festival Coordinator): It was a really huge public awareness campaign to let people know about the natural and the cultural resources in the river valley. Sometimes when things are in your own backyard, you don't notice them and you aren 't aware of their significance.

Narrator: One of the founders of the Heritage Alliance, Joyce Wolf also played a major role in staging this festival.

Joyce Wolf: The idea was to get people to thinking again about the river, about our connection to the river, the heritage that we all share. Just thinking about the watershed as a whole as well. The river is part of the watershed ... an important part of the watershed, but what we do on the land is equally important to what ultimately happens to the river.

Donelin: One of the underlying goals was certainly to have an identity with this watershed. And the use of the map, the use of the logo for the alliance ... I think all of those things were really helpful. And I do think people ... just looking at the f estival guide and knowing where the festival was going up and downstream -- 'now, where is it now? And where's this community?' There was some attention given to where communities are and how many river miles there might be betwixt and between. And a ll of that gave a real continuity and connection from Junction City to Kansas City.

Narrator: The festival came to an end in the middle of October at River City, USA, which overlooks the point where the Kansas River flows into the Missouri at Kansas City. A number of speakers and entertainers came to take part in the event, and educat ional displays were set up here as they had been each weekend at other venues along the river. Not many people showed up for the festival on this particular day, however, and the turnout was sparse in some of the other cities as well. Many of the smalle r towns experienced greater participation as residents rallied around this opportunity to come together and demonstrate their community spirit.

Donelin: We had right around 9000 people in a rough count from one end to the other in our 289 programs in 23 communities. And maybe that's not an overwhelming number, but it certainly gave a broadbased support. Many of the communities -- the larger com munities, such as Lawrence, had programs in more than one location. And when you looked at it ahead of time, it's like -- this is going to be too spread out; this is not going to get people together. But what it really did was to let more people be a pa rt of things in their own venue. And I think that's a real key -- that it doesn't have to be bringing tremendous numbers together and that it all be in one place. It can all be spread out. Our resources are certainly spread out. A lot of people became aware of what was happening not maybe by attending programs, but through the media. There was a lot of coverage. There was a lot of interest. It was certainly a unique approach to getting the message out -- that, hey, we've got resources that we need to be aware of.

Narrator: While most of the media coverage promoted the festival, an article in one paper raised questions about the motives of the Heritage Alliance, citing concerns about such things as increased governmental regulation over the use of private property .

Wolf: The headlines were something like 'is there something more to the alliance than a river festival?' Well the answer shortly is 'yes.' There's a whole lot more to us than this. This is our major project that's taken the better part of a year to pull together and pull off. And all of our committees have been working together with the thought of having a display to use for this. But it's only one aspect of what we do.

Donelin: The alliance ... when people look at the variety or diversity of partners that are on the list ... and this was again questioned -- how can you have these groups that have different points of view all come together? And that has been, I would s ay, the strength of the alliance -- is to have everybody at the table. And yes, there may be some differences of opinion, but everybody needs to understand the other side just as well as their own side. And this is a forum in which that can be done.

Narrator: In conjunction with the river festival, the alliance published a booklet that presents a brief history of the Kaw Valley and discusses potential solutions to some of the problems that accompany population growth. It also includes the full text of the partnership agreement, which talks about such things as building consensus for resource conservation.

Donelin: It's not that the alliance has any blueprint that's already made for conservation -- it is through people's awareness and education that the people of the valley will be the stewards of this resource. I think when people realize how fantastic it is ... and I think that's what the festival did for a lot of the communities -- was to make them realize what a great place they have -- each of the river communities. And to share that with the other communities was a wonderful reawakening!

Wolf: And I think Rex Buchanan said it so beautifully at the opening when he said 'we're celebrating a river, and Kansas doesn't celebrate its natural resources very often.' We celebrate a lot of other things -- basketball teams, football teams and things like that, but we tend to sort of take our natural resources for granted. And that's kind of the serious part of what this festival is all about is to say -- this is a really great place and we need to do a better job of appreciating it and caring for it.

Donelin: We're pretty fortunate to have as much of the natural resources left that we have. Many parts that have greater populations don't have this opportunity. And we need to wake up to it because the population is continuing to grow. There will be more people here in Kansas all up and down this river valley. And what we do with the resources that we have is going to be critical to Kansas in the future.