Idaho’s first water education center

The Boise WaterShed Environmental Education Center opened in 2008 and was created through a partnership between the City of Boise and Boise WaterShed Exhibits, Inc., a local non-profit organization. Located at the West Boise Water Renewal Facility, the center is the City’s first LEED-certified building and Idaho’s first water education center. The Boise WaterShed is designed to promote water stewardship by teaching people of all ages how to protect and conserve our resource for future generations.

As a high-desert city, water continues to be an increasingly valuable resource, and education is a key component in conservation and protecting water quality. The WaterShed is also home to the largest collection of public art in the state of Idaho. By tying together water, art and education, the public art provides a creative lens to view our community’s water and attracts a broader group of visitors!

Completed in 2016 and acting as the outdoor portion of the WaterShed, the 2-acre outdoor River Campus presents a dimension to water education with exterior exhibits that show the big picture of the Treasure Valley’s water resources. The interactive park-like setting takes visitors on a journey from Lucky Peak Reservoir, through Boise’s urban streets, and the Water Renewal Facility. From here visitors can watch cleaned water returned to the Boise River and see it flow downstream to the agricultural zone that sustains our food industry. Ultimately, visitors realize that what we do upstream not only affects downstream users, but also the overall health of the Snake River.

Interested in visiting the Boise WaterShed with your family? Click here to stay up-to-date when the facility opens up to the public again!