It’s all one water.

The Warren County Conservation District (WCCD) will hold an art contest for students in grades kindergarten through eighth.

“All of the water on earth is connected,” WCCD Watershed Specialist Jean Gomory said. “Water evaporates from one part of the world and rains down in another.”

“A watershed is an area of land that, when it rains, all water flows down to the same spot,” Gomory said. “Watersheds are broken up into sub-watersheds. For example, the Brokenstraw Creek and Conewango Creek are watersheds in and of themselves. However, they are both sub-watersheds of the larger Allegheny River Watershed, which also includes French Creek (Erie County) and the Clarion River (Clarion County) among others. Together, these streams form the Allegheny River.”

There’s more. “The reach of watersheds is even further than that,” she said. “More streams enter the area from farther away to join the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh, as part of the Ohio River Watershed, which then joins the Mississippi River Watershed (which includes most of the rivers and creeks from the Midwest), and finally discharges into the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Nature is one large, connected system,” Gomory said. “It is the interpretation of that connection that we want to see in the artwork.”

The conservation district is working with Warren County schools on the project.

Interested students are encouraged to ask their art and science teachers if their school is participating.

WCCD and schools are working together on a presentation, as well.

“The WCCD is offering to show a Non-Point Source Pollution Enviroscape demonstration in science classes to provide students with a hands-on experience to understand that pollution in one area can affect life at another location,” Gomory said. “For example, if pollution makes its way into Conewango Creek in South Dayton, N.Y., you might see the effects in Russell. These effects could be in the form of visually seeing an oily sheen on the water, noticing a strange smell, or the worst-case scenario would be seeing dead fish.”

Works may be in pencil, crayon, colored pencil, marker, charcoal, paint, or pen and must be on 8.5 by 11 card stock.

The deadline to submit works of art is 4 p.m. Friday, March 17.

There will be formal judging Monday, April 3, to determine first through third places in each age group, with winners being notified on Wednesday, April 5.

There will be public voting for the People’s Choice from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 21, through Friday, March 31 at the WCCD building at 4000 Conewango Ave., Warren.

Prizes are sponsored by the Warren County Visitor’s Bureau.

More information is available by visiting www.wcconservation.net.