Eastern Iowa Community College District
IN-2: Innovation 2

Midwest Center for Safety and Rescue Training: The Midwest Center for Safety and Rescue Training (MWCSRT) was born in 2007, when the Eastern Iowa Community College District purchased a former water park with the intent of turning the 30-acre facility into a unique training ground for firefighters, emergency responders, and other professionsal to enhance their safety and rescue skills. Over the past three years, the facility has been transformed into a hands-on training facility with a wave pool capable of simulating white caps on the Mississippi River located next to a 55 foot tall tower capable of simulating rope and high angle rescue. Training currently includes Ice Rescue, Hazardous Materials, Technical Rescue, Construction Safety, Firefighter Skills, and Police Tactical Maneuvers. The Sustainability Innovation in this project lies in EICCD's vision to re-purpose a water park facility into the training faciity. The wave pool became a water rescue training apparatus, the tower from the high water slide became a high angle rescue training tool, and the bumper boat pond became a boat dock / marine vessel fire training area. Rather than creating a new facility on virgin ground, EICCD sustainably took an un-wanted acreage and turned it into a value-added training facility. In accomplishing the transformation, EICCD donated,sold, re-usedand recycled much of the infrastructure and equipment from the water park. Examples include: 1400 feet of chain link fence donated to a local baseball program, tables, deck chairs, inner tubes PFD's donated to area Girl Scout camp, chlorine injection pumps to area city swimming pool, recycling of over 16,000 pounds of metal, tires, and plastics from the faciilty, selling of three large water slides for re-use at a resort in the southern USA, and re-use of concrete from the former parking lot, which was ground on site and used in infrastructure improvements for the training center. A document further detailing re-use and recycling efforts for the project can be found under the public notes section.