Watershed U. - Creating a Common Language for Integrated Management

One thing that just drives me crazy is when people argue just past each other – when they disagree, but about different things.

Maybe an example will work better – a civil engineer looks at an urban stream as a storm drain. A local Sierra Club leader looks at it as bird habitat. The engineer sees some mallards and says “look, there are plenty of birds here, and the community is protected”! The Sierra Club leader sees only concrete banks, lack of river access, and missed opportunities. Both have different objectives and different criteria for success.

California began to embrace the concept of stakeholder driven watershed management with the passage of SB 1627, the Integrated Regional Water Management Planning (IRWMP) Act in 2002, I was a newly minted Ph.D. just starting my career with UC Cooperative Extension and ending an internship with the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, working with the amazing Dorothy Green.

IRWMP efforts brought together water resource managers, civil engineers, farmers, environmentalists, community residents, and others to work on building plans to provide multiple benefits to people and nature. These groups sought to maximize benefits and minimize costs associated with managing urban and rural streams. Prop 50, and later Prop 84, funded this work, and also supported DWR and others to take part on EPA designed trainings called Working at a Watershed Level, which I helped to instruct. But many of us realized that more was needed.

In conducting watershed management, agencies and organizations cross political and organizational boundaries. Often, government agencies with specific mandates may be asked to consider a much wider variety of issues than they were previously responsible for. Usually, a variety of community-based, environmental, and industry/business related organizations are asked to take part in watershed management, to try and increase buy-in to management decisions from the early stages of the process. These agencies and organizations may have competing interests, little knowledge of each other’s concerns, and limited communication skills. Most of the planning efforts were led by local public works agencies, and I hope no-one will take offense if I say that engineers often lack the skill set required for multi-stakeholder collaboration. Watershed planning teams lack a common language. Watershed management is complicated, difficult, frustrating, and time consuming, but can allow us to come up with sustainable, economical ways to manage streams. Developing a common literacy can make the process easier and more rewarding.

So, with a team from NorthEast Trees and the Arroyo Seco Foundation, we developed an 18 hour course, the first of several Watershed U. programs, about the Arroyo Seco to kick off the development of an IRWMP. The idea was that some attendees would here about basic topics they knew a lot about (and might even be guest speakers) but also topics that were unfamiliar. The engineer would learn about biodiversity and ecosystem complexity and how it supports ecological resilience. The Sierra Club rep would learn about the flood history and need to protect life and property. And both would learn about how a lack of access to parks impacted the physical and mental well-being of the community.

Subsequently, I went on the develop Watershed U. courses for the Santa Clara River, the Ventura River, and Compton Creek, while my colleagues from NorthEast Trees and Arroyo Seco Foundation joined the collaborative IRWMP development for this stream running through Pasadena and NE Los Angeles. Were there still disagreements about priorities and goals for the watershed? You bet. But rather than circling around and around, stakeholders were able to identify the core of their disagreements, and, if not providing everything they might want, come to acceptable compromises. Because they finally spoke each other’s language.

In a follow up survey 2-5 years after they had participated in the program, 89 percent or respondents said the information they learned would have been harder to find without the program, 75 percent felt that their effectiveness had increased due to Watershed U., and 62 percent reported they had increased their ability to communicate and developed new relationships in the course. One respondent worked with neighbors to establish a local land conservancy, and another founded a committee to develop a pocket park with drought-tolerant plants. Ninety percent of respondents would recommend participation in Watershed U. to colleagues.

"Watershed U. was a life-changing event to me …. I became involved in the Ventura County Civic Alliance due to people I met at Watershed U." - A private watershed resident

"I'm more aware of how the different aspects of the watershed interact and am able to consider the impacts projects have on one another..." - A local government representative