The Urban Waters Learning Network is a peer-to-peer network of people and organizations that share practical, on-the-ground experiences in order to improve urban waterways and revitalize the neighborhoods around them.

River Network staff coordinate the Learning Network in collaboration with Groundwork USA, providing support and opportunities for members to share successes, challenges and technical resources. Among other services, the Learning Network offers training webinars for all urban waters practitioners. See below for recordings of prior webinars.

RECORDINGS OF PREVIOUS WEBINARS/PEER CALLS

Integrated Waters Management – What Is It and How Can It Benefit Your Community and River?

Presenters: Lynn Broaddus, President, Broadview Collaborative and River Network Board Chair; Theresa Connor, Project Development Officer, One Water Solutions Institute, Colorado State University

Description: What does “Integrated Water Management” mean for your watershed and your community? Where has it been used and what are the benefits and challenges? Can it help your community achieve “triple bottom line” (environmental, social and economic) benefits?

Learn how communities – driven by environmental, cost, social and other concerns – are seeking ways to integrate water management with other sectors like transportation, health and energy to create multiple community benefits.  At scales ranging from the neighborhood and city to the watershed and basin, some communities are doing the work of breaking down the silos in water management to increase sustainability and equitably maximize benefits across the community and watershed.

This webinar kicks-off a new webinar series by River Network and the Urban Waters Learning Network about Integrated Water Management. The series will cover multiple examples of how these approaches are taking root across the country. The speakers for this first session provide an overview of Integrated Water Management, including context, drivers, examples and opportunities. A series of tools and resources for thinking further are also discussed and explained. The recording of this August 24, 2016 webinar is available here.

Green Streets: Filtering and Slowing Stormwater, Revitalizing Neighborhoods and Making Streets Safer

Presenters: Lisa Treese, RLA, LEED® AP; Senior Landscape Architect, Kansas City Water Services; Tipton Fowlkes, Assoc. ASLA, LEED AP, Hawkins Partners, Inc. Landscape Architects; April Ingle, Science and Policy Associate, River Network (Moderator)

Description: As much as 38% of an urban area’s impervious area can be in the form of streets. The goal of Green Streets efforts is to bring the benefits of green infrastructure practices to communities’ streets and rights of way in order to manage stormwater, thus reducing pollution, erosion and flooding while replenishing groundwater. Green Streets can also compliment other goals in your community related to urban revitalization, aesthetic improvement, and making streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Adding the “green element” to these widely supported community efforts provides great opportunities for partnering and leveraging resources toward better stormwater management.

Are you interested in convincing your community to invest in Green Streets? In this recorded webinar, you will learn about Kansas City’s Middle Blue River Basin Green Solutions Pilot Project and the significant role that right-of-ways along streets play in controlling stormwater runoff. Lisa explains what Kansas City has learned about a) building and maintaining community support of Green Streets, b) ensuring the long-term success of Green Streets, and c) the positive impacts Green Streets are having on local waterways and neighborhoods. From Hawkins Partners, you’ll learn how to conduct an assessment to determine the potential for Green Streets that can be used to garner critical support for them in your community. This technique was developed as part of a River Network project supported by the Surdna Foundation. The recording of this May 11, 2016 webinar is available here.

Turning Vacant Lots into Green Spaces: Baltimore’s Experience (and Replicable Tools)

Presenters: Mike Galvin, Urban Waters Federal Partnership Ambassador; J. Morgan Grove, USFS Baltimore Field Station Team Leader; Seema Iyer, Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance-Jacob France Institute Associate Director

Description: In this recorded webinar, you’ll learn about Baltimore’s Green Pattern Book, a tool created as part of the city’s Growing Green Initiative to help guide the greening of vacant land by city agencies, nonprofit organizations and individual residents. This tool outlines eight green project patterns (e.g. stormwater management, green parking, etc.) and provides site-selection criteria and installation/maintenance guidance for each. The tool provides a very useful template for other urban areas to follow. You’ll also learn about the Green Registry, a publicly accessible, interactive mapping tool that allows users to register and map their own greening activities on vacant land. The Green Registry is a project of the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA-JFI) and currently includes components for stormwater management and community-managed open space projects. BNIA-JFI is the Baltimore partner of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, an effort led by the Urban Institute to build neighborhood information systems to support local policymaking and community building that is active in over 30 cities across the U.S. The recording of this January 13th, 2016 webinar is available here.

Training A Green Infrastructure Workforce

Presenters: Eli Allen, Director of Retrofit Baltimore (Civic Works); Hye Yeong Kwon, Executive Director (Center for Watershed Protection); Glen Abrams, Director of Sustainable Communities (Pennsylvania Horticultural Society)

Description: In this recorded webinar you’ll learn about efforts to meet two communities’ parallel needs to both manage stormwater and train a skilled workforce to install and maintain green infrastructure projects. Civic Works and the Center for Watershed Protection will share their work to create a certification-based stormwater training track that connects Baltimore’s underserved residents with careers in the emerging stormwater industry. This effort is part of the Center’s national Clean Water Certification and Workforce Development Program. You will also learn about the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s (PHS) experience partnering with a local AmeriCorps program, the City of Philadelphia, the City of Chester and others to encourage the development of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) practices, increase local capacity to implement and maintain GSI and utilize sustainable land care practices by providing training to municipal employees, under‐skilled landscape laborers and at-risk youth. A recording of this December 8th, 2015 webinar is available here.

Engaging Elected Officials in Your Work

Presenters: Sven-Erik Kaiser, U.S. EPA Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations; Keely Monroe, Alliance for Justice; Rick Magder, Groundwork Hudson Valley

Description: This recorded webinar covers various aspects of engaging elected officials in urban waters work. Sven-Erik Kaiser provides guidance and tips for how to best approach this very specific type of outreach, how to prepare and conduct meetings with officials and considerations for building long-term relations with them. Keely Monroe provides an overview of the difference between general advocacy and legally defined “lobbying” and shares resources to help participants understand IRS lobbying rules and restrictions for nonprofits. Rick Magder shares his experience engaging elected officials in the Saw Mill River daylighting project and navigating those relationships, which helped turn a $5,000 seed grant into what is today a $19 million Saw Mill River daylighting project in the City of Yonkers, NY. A recording from this May 19th, 2015 session is available here.

Water Quality Monitoring for Impact and Engagement

Presenters: Stacey Eriksen, EPA Regional Coordinator (EPA Region 8); Jason Ulseth, Chatahoochee Riverkeeper (Atlanta, GA) & Rachel Hansgen, Groundwork Denver Program Manager (Denver, CO)

Description: In this recording, Stacey Eriksen reviews EPA resources available to support volunteer monitoring programs and outlines considerations in creating a QAPP; Jason Ulseth describes Chatahoochee’s Neighborhood Water Watch Program, which collects data weekly across nearly 80 sites to effect real on-the-ground change; and Rachel Hansgen describes the key role that partnerships play in Groundwork Denver’s monitoring program, which is part of that organization’s “ladder of engagement opportunities” for Denver’s urban youth. A recording from this April 8th, 2015 session is available here.

Greenways: The Urban Waters Experience

Presenters: Ryan Parker (Freshwater Land Trust, Alabama); Robin Corathers (Groundwork Cincinnati) & Jill Erickson (Heartland Conservation Alliance, Kansas City, MO)

Description: In this recording, Ryan Parker describes their grant-funded work to clean up brownfields and carve out green spaces for park land to create a greenway along Village Creek. Robin Corathers shares her organization’s 20-year effort to bring back green space in an environmental justice community, now in its last phase. Jill Erickson also shares the Heartland Conservation Alliance’s unique project to develop tools to help find the best vacant city lots to preserve as open space in Kansas City, Missouri. A recording from this February 10th, 2015 session is available here.

Protecting and Restoring Buffers – The Answer to Your Urban River’s Problems?

Presenters: Merritt Frey (Science & Policy Director, River Network) & Justin Anderson (Engineer and Public Services Deputy Director, City of Ogden, Utah)

Description: Merritt Frey reviews a variety of buffer types and their effectiveness in addressing many river issues, and shares “lessons learned” to help you advocate for buffer restoration or protection. Justin Anderson shares his experience as a leader on a highly successful urban buffer project, which you can use to engage your own city and local government officials in buffer restoration projects. A recording from this Dec. 4th, 2014 session is available here.

“Survival Training” for a Successful Urban Waters Cooperative Agreement

Presenter: EPA Region 6 staff

Description: A survival training webinar to help you manage your EPA Urban Waters Small grant and answer questions related to its Terms and Conditions, making changes to your project, and closing out the grant. A recording from this Nov. 13, 2014 session is available here.

Creating Lasting Connections on Social Media

Presenter: Andrea Berry, Director of Partnerships and Learning, Idealware

Description: In this webinar, Idealware shows you what works on social media, how you can engage with your audience on social media and move them up a ladder from a simple “like” to valued supporters, donors, or volunteers, and how you can move forward with a solid plan for your social media communications. Recorded May 7th, 2014.

Rivers, Trails, Conservation Assistance from the National Park Service

Presenters: National Park Service, Rivers & Trails Conservation Assistance Program Staff

Description: Ever want to know how to start that greenway project, or do you dream of how a bike trail or water trail might be located along the river in your urban community? Staff from the National Park Services’ Rivers, Trails, Conservation Assistance (RTCA) program describe their assistance program in this webinar . Recorded March 25th, 2014.

The Many Forms of Community-Based Environmental Education

Presenters:Donny Roush, EarthForce (Denver, CO); Charlene Bohanon, Galveston Bay Foundation (Webster, Texas); Tamara Doan, California Coastal Commission (Watsonville, CA).

Description: This webinar explores the many forms that environmental education may take in urban environments. Recorded Feb. 26th, 2014.

Urban Waters Outreach: Engaging Minority Audiences

Presenters: Beverly Woods, Northern Middlesex Council of Governments (Greater Lowell Region, Massachusetts); Alberto Rodriguez (Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, Seattle, WA); Cheryl Jenkins (City of Nampa, Idaho).

Description: Different languages and cultural nuances make our job of communication more complicated in our ever increasing diverse urban world. This webinar presents initiatives by three urban waters organizations that have succeeded in building trust and engagement among non-English speakers. Recorded Feb. 19th, 2014.

Creative Partnerships in Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring

Presenter: Merritt Frey, River Network.

Description: How can creative partnerships help you establish or grow your volunteer water quality monitoring effort? This webinar provides an overview of how volunteer water quality and habitat monitoring efforts are incorporating partnering into their strategies, and how those partnerships work. We will share the results of a national survey of monitoring project leaders and a selection of case studies demonstrating different types of volunteer monitoring partnerships. Recorded July 25th, 2013.

Targeting Your Grant Efforts Effectively

Presenter: Rick Magder, Groundwork USA.

Description: Most urban waters nonprofits in the U.S. rely on grants from foundations and public agencies. The organizations that are really good at securing grants are the ones that will survive in our highly competitive funding environment. In this webinar, learn how to choose grants carefully and how to give your organization the best chance of being funded and ultimately surviving in the urban waters arena. Recorded June 20th, 2013.