Implementing a community composting program fulfills the Scott River Watershed Council’s mission to serve the human and natural communities of Scott Valley. While we are a rural community, food scarcity, especially for high quality fresh foods, is a real issue. We envision increased economic opportunities for disadvantaged community members by employing local residents as the composting program grows over time, as well as offering the community’s youth an opportunity to learn job skills by participating in the program.
In 2022 SRWC worked with Community Composting for Green Spaces through funding from CalRecycle to set up a community composting hub at the office. The community composting hub has brought people together over a love of good soil and gardening. There is a lovely compost dropoff box at the corner of Highway 3 and the SRWC office driveway that composters can drop food scraps in at any convenient time. It was built to be beautiful and functional by Stefanie Root, master builder and friend of the council. Our wonderful community composters have donated more than 1500 lbs of food scraps and local ranchers including Judd Hanna have donated manure and other bulk materials. We combined all these local waste materials, that would have been shipped out of the valley to offgas in a landfill, and turned them into fertile living soil. After donating materials and time, our community composters then got to take home soil for their gardens. We gave away over 150 lbs of composted soil this year, with plans to create and give away even more in 2023.
| Funder | Contract # | Start Date | End Date | Funding Source | Land Ownership | Award Amount |
| CACC | 11/30/2023 | 02/28/2025 | State | Private | $13,525 |