BEST BET: Carlsbad nature center celebrates World Water Day
By: Stephen Rubin

CARLSBAD ---- Southern California is finally experiencing a bona fide rainy season again, but don't expect organizers of the World Water Day Festival to endorse allowing the hose to run while washing your car.

Even though water makes up 70 percent of the Earth's surface, water as a usable resource is one that must be consumed wisely. That's the lesson March 20 at the fourth annual World Water Day Festival at the Agua Hedionda Lagoon Discovery Center in Carlsbad. As part of the World Water Day (unwater.org), the festival will help children and their parents understand that conservation and protection of water continues to be vital. The festival also helps them better understand water problems around the world.

This learning will be accomplished through activities that including booths hosted by Sea Life Aquarium at Legoland, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the Hubb-Sea World fish hatchery. The event takes place against the backdrop of the 400-acre Agua Hedionda Lagoon.

Among the featured activities will be wildlife encounters. Carlsbad AquaFarm will provide an up-close look at sea horses. Members of the San Diego Herpetological Society will be there with frogs and toads in tow. Also scheduled for visits are birds of prey, many species of which presumably benefit from healthy oceans.

There will also be water-testing demonstrations and exhibits on salt-water desalination, wetlands and watersheds. Attendees can go home with seaglass jewelry (for a price, of course), and children can get crafty. Scripps Institute of Oceanography will present information about the floating garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean.

The Discovery Center's California native plant garden is also part of the event, teaching how native plants can save water and reduce toxic runoff from storm drains.

Event sponsors are Sempra Energy, Poseidon Resources, Carlsbad and Myron L Company.

Festival hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free. The center is at 1580 Cannon Road in Carlsbad. Call (760) 804-1969 or visit aguahedionda.org.