New water bottle filling station sates thirst in downtown Leavenworth

Downtown Leavenworth has a gleaming new Elkay water bottle filling station, that also doubles as a drinking fountain. Located outside the restrooms on Front Street, the filling station has been a collaboration of the Earth Stewardship Group at Faith Lutheran Church, the city of Leavenworth, and Leavenworth Recycles. The community is invited to a ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 21 at 10 a.m. to help dedicate the new filling station.

“We are grateful for the generosity of many from Faith Lutheran, Leavenworth Recycles, and from other community members, who have financially contributed to this Earth Stewardship project,” says Mary Schramm, one of the project organizers. “We thank the city for being very supportive and gracious in working with us to install and maintain this fountain. We have raised enough money for two more fountains, one of which will be installed in Enchantment Park this fall.”

The new filling station is already a hit with Leavenworth’s downtown denizens. The filling station was installed in late July, and immediately there were about 100 bottles per day being filled as temperatures soared into the high 90s. 

“Herb from the city public works department shared with us that the artists running booths at Art in the Park really like filling their bottles at the new filling station,” says MaryCarol Nelson, also a member of the Earth Stewardship Group.

“Humans have created billions of tons of plastic items since 1950,” says Schramm. “Seven billion tons have been thrown away, 9 percent is recycled and 12 percent has been incinerated. The remaining 79 percent is clogging up landfills, littering landscapes, or floating in oceans.”

But the group’s concern goes a step beyond reducing waste. 

“Like the community solar project that we installed on the middle school, our projects share a focus of reducing our collective carbon footprint,” says Nelson. “Every time someone refills a water bottle, fossil fuel is conserved that would otherwise manufacture a disposable bottle which has to be shipped to our stores. The energy we waste using bottled water is enough to power 190,000 homes in America.”

“As a community, we can be grateful that Leavenworth has some of the purist water in the country,” says Schramm. “We hope this fountain will encourage the use of this great gift instead of buying yet another plastic bottle of water.”