River Protection & Restoration

Mission: To help people learn about techniques, programs and laws they may employ or adapt to protect and restore rivers and their watersheds.

How do we help protect and restore rivers?

Through River Protection and Restoration Tools, we help our Partners:

Learn about available river conservation techniques, programs, and laws;
Decide how best to apply or adapt them to their situation; and
Use them to greatest effect.

We emphasize the Clean Water Act, the law with the most potential impact for most waters in the United States.

The Clean Water Act is a powerful law that explicitly empowers citizens to participate in its interpretation, implementation and enforcement. But many of its strongest provisions are little understood and poorly applied.

Through our River Protection and Restoration Program, we demystify laws like the Clean Water Act. In particular, we help concerned citizens identify and make the most of greatly underutilized public involvement opportunities.

Key Publications

The Clean Water Act: An Owner's Manual Buy It
Permiting an End to Pollution: How to Scrutinize and Strengthen Water Pollution Permits in Your State Buy It | Read It
Tracking TMDLs: A Field Guide for Evaluating Proposed Watershed Restoration Plans Buy It | Read It

Training

We offer several Protection and Restoration training programs and workshops of varying length and design. They include:

Intensive Clean Water Act training program
Clean Water Act 101
Data-to-Action training programs
Training of Trainers
On-line training on Clean Water Act available at cleanwateract.org

Consultation and Facilitation

A growing number of groups contract with our Protection and Restoration staff for direct consultation each year. Typically, they seek help in developing a strategy that includes the use of the Clean Water Act to prevent or solve particular environmental problems.

Recent Activities and Accomplishments

Distributed over 3200 copies of The Clean Water Act: An Owner's Manual, which has received national acclaim and widespread use by local and state groups.
Developed and held intensive state-based Clean Water Act training workshops in Oregon, Vermont, Georgia, Colorado, Tennessee, New Mexico, Ohio and Alaska.
With support from the C.S. Mott Foundation, provided mini-grants to groups in the Southeast and Great Lakes to support implementation of strategies developed at our Clean Water workshops.
Provided Introduction to the Clean Water Act trainings – as well as topic-specific trainings on permits, standards, total maximum daily loads and antidegradation – at numerous state and regional meetings organized by our Partners.
With River Watch staff, developed a Data to Action training program.
Began consulting with groups using the Clean Water Act to solve problems in their areas.
Convened a regional meeting in the Southeast and helped convene a regional meeting in the West to identify specific ways groups could work together to secure better Clean Water Act implementation. Promoted and supported dialogue about key issues between our Partners and government officials.
With other national organizations, produced citizen guides to reviewing NPDES permits and TMDLs.

For more information on getting training or consultation on River Protection and Restoration, call our Portland office at 1-800-423-6747.

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