Conduct or support multi-party community conversations, assessments, plans and actions around improving local water quality and quantity.
Best Practice of this action
Rating Guideline
 |
A high-level elected city official or city staff person participates in at least 1 community event that includes a variety of stakeholders who provide broad community representation socially, culturally and economically (farmers, other business people, environmentalists, recreation users, and other government staff such as watershed staff, one of whom has scientific expertise). The conversation should be outside of/more expansive than the TMDL process and include more than just impaired waters such as participation in One Watershed One Plan effort, wellhead protection plan, shoreland planning, or other effort for protecting local water quality. |
 |
The city cosponsors at least 4 water quality conversations that explicitly focus on significant water quality improvement; report on/conduct a watershed assessment; report on a collaborative project, such as with a Ditch Authority, that improves lake/water quality. |
 |
The conversations are intentionally facilitated/mediated to influence changes in public/private actions that are likely to improve local water quality, quantity and surface-groundwater interactions; residents work with city to determine specific projects within a city-established Storm Sewer Improvement Taxing District; city signs-onto an existing watershed plan or develops its own. |
Resources
- Successful community engagement practices apply community discussion, reflection and collaboration to influence and promote collective action and collaborative problem-solving. Community engagement practices particularly good at this generative process are promoted through Art of Hosting (AoH) and Network Weaving. Read about a spring 2012 water conversation in Owatonna sponsored by the Cannon River Watershed Partnership and other grassroots citizen groups, farm groups, the MPCA and InCommons. Using AoH techniques, the meeting explored how citizens, businesses and government can share leadership by collaborating to restore water quality in local rivers.
- Assessment questions for cities include: What drains into the water body from inside the city (for example, a wastewater treatment plant) and from outside the city and to where does the water flow outside the city? What are all the water body uses and is there public access? What land uses are in the contributing watershed and has drinking water / wellhead protection planning been done? Is the water on the MPCA's Impaired Waters list? What is the DNR shoreland classification? Is there an annual water festival?
- Conversations may be informed in two ways. One is by understanding a community's capacity to engage in water resource issues (Univer. of MN's Mae Davenport's 2013 PowerPoint). The other is by looking at the ecological health of the watershed in which your city sits. See the Watershed Health Assessment Tool from the MN Dept. of Natural Resources, which has data for each of Minnesota's 81 major watersheds.
Order Number
2
Action Type
Finite