Rochester Campus/ About Us

Cascade Meadow is proud to partner with several organizations and institutions to offer high quality educational experiences about water, energy, and wetlands.  If you are a school, business, non-profit organization, governmental agency, or other organization whose mission aligns with Cascade Meadow, we invite you to consider collaborating with us! Cascade’s current partners include:

• Rochester Public Utilities (RPU) the city’s electric and water company, contributes its expertise on energy and groundwater-related topics.  Through the partnership, RPU has installed several interactive educational displays:  the Conserve and Save Energy Fun House, the Water Footprint exhibit, and (in partnership with Rochester Public Works) the Water Connections,  All about Aquifers, and Safe Wells, Clean Water exhibits.  RPU also provides an on-site Energy and Groundwater Educator who gives tours of the RPU exhibits and facility, and is available to answer questions. Finally, RPU also  installed the wind and solar power systems on the site supporting the effort to build Cascade Meadow as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified building.. Four distinct goals guide RPU’s partnership with Cascade Meadow:
  1. Provide customers with an educational resource for helping them manage their energy use.
  2. Demonstrate market-ready, renewable means of generating electricity.
  3. Communicate and demonstrate possible future means of electricity generation (i.e. smart grid).
  4. Provide visitors with a local forum to gain the most pertinent and relevant information about drinking water, ground water protection, and water conservation.
• The Rochester Public Works Department, The Rochester Public Works Department (RPW), which is responsible for the city’s storm water infrastructure system and storm water management program, installed the Streets to Waterways exhibit and partnered with RPU and the Rochester Water Reclamation Plant to build the Water Connections exhibit.  RPW’s staff will continue to provide storm water education programming.  There are three goals for its partnership with Cascade Meadow:
  1. Find opportunities to showcase Cascade Meadow’s best practices for storm water management as models for storm water utility customers.
  2. Provide customers with education and public participation activities at Cascade Meadow that make storm water management and water quality issues relevant to their lives.
  3. Partner with Cascade Meadow on real-time monitoring and research projects that advance storm water management and water resource protection practices.
• Rochester Water Reclamation Plant partnered with RPU and RPW on the Water Connections exhibit and installed the Down the Drain exhibit.
• The Zumbro Watershed Partnership, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving water quality in the Zumbro River Watershed, houses its office at Cascade Meadow and provides watershed-based educational programming. ZWP has also partnered with Cascade Meadow to develop watershed education materials such as the scale watershed aerial image on our exhibit level floor and the engaging watershed scavenger hunt cards (also in partnership with McGhie & Betts Environmental Services).

Please contact us with your ideas about how you can make a contribution to our success!