Watershed Support Network

Goal: To increase the ability of watershed partnerships to plan and implement successful watershed-level protection and restoration projects.

Approach: River Network and partner organizations across the nation coordinate and provide support services for local watershed groups and training in specific skills.

  1. Watershed assessment and monitoring design.
  2. Analysis of watershed project alternatives and results.
  3. Requirements of the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts.
  4. Acquisition of funds (for watershed assessment, protection and restoration).
  5. Outreach (to ensure involvement and support of the local project community).
  6. Collaborative planning and consensus-building techniques.
  7. Assessment of partnership ability to undertake long-term watershed projects (benchmarking).

An Integrated National Support System

The thousands of watershed partnership across the country need an integrated national support system to help assure their success. When fully implemented, this system will include national training programs, on-line resources, "self-help" assessment tools, written materials, regional workshops, direct consulting services and access to capacity-building grants.

The elements of this system should assure that watershed groups can be strong partners with state and federal agencies. Managers of watershed support programs across the country should learn best techniques from each other, test new ideas, and compare and evaluate programs.

River Network and the Watershed Support Network (WSN) have demonstrably increased the capacity of watershed organizations. Watershed groups that received our services developed larger and more diverse budgets, became less reliant on EPA 319 grants, and made better use of essential planning and fiscal management tools.

Over the last two years, River Network and seven other capacity-building groups assessed, trained and supported watershed groups across the country. The majority of those groups were in six pilot project states (Colorado, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Mexico, West Virginia and Kentucky). The others received intensive training and/or consulting from River Network and the Institute for Conservation Leadership.

Project Findings and Measurable Results

At our first meeting for this project in 2002, we determined what we believe a "sustainable watershed group" needs to survive. Those elements are as follows: a strong program and/or watershed plan, enough funds to meet programmatic needs, a diversity of unrestricted funding sources adequate to meet operational costs, a strong core volunteer leadership, and basic planning and management tools such as budgets, workplans and fundraising plans.

This project has given us a baseline measurement of these measures of organizational capacity for a large sub-set of watershed groups across the country. Watershed Support Network trainers asked the groups they worked with to complete the self-assessment both before and after receiving our services. The results indicate tremendous organizational progress towards sustainability for the groups we worked with the most intensively.

Environmental Results

Each of the watershed groups we assisted have achieved specific environmental results "on-the-ground," "in-the-stream" and in the policy realm. Each group has conducted activities such as the following: watershed assessment and monitoring, watershed planning, community education and/or stakeholder collaboration, on-the-ground watershed restoration projects, community involvement in reaching policy solutions to water pollution threats and identifying existing pollution sources.