Pathways for Getting to Better Water Quality: The Citizen Effect

Nonpoint source pollutants are the number one cause of impaired waters in the United States. In many regions, agriculture contributes excessive nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment to creeks, rivers and lakes creating unintended and severe negative consequences to our water bodies. Solutions to nonpoint source agricultural pollution must reach beyond ecological science and technical intervention to engage citizens and activate the public will to invest personal and public resources. In this introduction, we offer an overview of the theoretical pathways and scientific evidence chapters that follow.

Connecting people to new information and to each other can change the political and social landscape and ultimately influence the physical conditions of local water bodies. The mechanisms of change are regulatory forces, economic incentives and disincentives, social pressure, civic structure, and individuals’ internal values and beliefs. The geography of place-the local watershed-is central to building relationships among citizens and the capacity to develop a unified vision and plan for water resource management.

Citizen leadership must be developed, nurtured and encouraged. Strong leaders create trust, help others make sense of information, generate new knowledge, connect their followers to each other, and mobilize broad support for water resource protection. Leaders must believe there is a problem, understand the sources of pollution, be able to talk with others about a vision for getting to better water quality, and be willing to change their own practices. When scientists and technical watershed specialists work side-by-side with local leaders, citizens are better able to connect to the basic identity of their watershed; exchange new information, emerging science and technical solutions; and change their practices and encourage others to change.

Nonpoint source pollutants are the number one cause of impaired waters in the United States. In many regions, agriculture contributes excessive nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment to creeks, rivers and lakes creating unintended and severe negative consequences to our water bodies. Solutions to nonpoint source agricultural pollution must reach beyond ecological science and technical intervention to engage citizens and activate the public will to invest personal and public resources. In this introduction, we offer an overview of the theoretical pathways and scientific evidence chapters that follow.

The voice of watershed residents – whether in agreement or disagreement – is an essential part of the learning and negotiation process needed for internal change in beliefs and active engagement, which is the only route to sustainable adoption of appropriate conservation practices. While conflict is generally thought to be a barrier to community action, it can be used as an asset to strengthen local watershed councils and other community organizations. The underlying principle of local control and local leadership is central to leveraging conflict to achieve positive community watershed outcomes. During my 11 years as an extension community development specialist, I found that even when local leadership is inexperienced, under conditions of local control, conflict assumes a different character than when state and federal agencies attempt to drive change from the top down. In this chapter, I will discuss conflict and authority’s political dimensions, types of conflict, the importance of turmoil and conflict, and strategies to enhance the value of conflict as a community development asset. My community development work in Iowa’s Maquoketa watershed is used as a case study to illustrate these concepts.

The words we use define who we are and how we think about the world around us. Our language as we discuss problems of agricultural nonpoint source water pollution conveys our images and meanings of being a good farmer and socially acceptable farming practices. Re-languaging the conservation message and increased efforts to give consistent messages are important strategies in developing a culture of conservation and changing social norms about the value and urgency of protecting vulnerable land and water resources.

Measuring the quality of citizen participation in watershed projects provides a way to track and evaluate citizen involvement over time. Technical watershed specialists and citizen groups can use indicators of citizen participation to adapt their processes to achieve the kinds of citizen involvement most appropriate to the project phase as well provide accountable documentation to funding sources.

Water plays a vital role in the functioning of the Earth’s ecosystems. Polluted water has a serious impact on all living creatures, including humankind. It can negatively affect every possible aspect of human life: drinking, daily household needs, agricultural production, recreation, transportation, and manufacturing. Water quality problems, like all other environmental issues, are social problems. Attitudes and beliefs about the environment and water influence how water resources are used and underlie the social willingness to respond to water pollution. Efforts to address water quality issues can be better directed when interventions take into account how people think about the environment and frame water concerns.

The New York City Watershed Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signed in January 1997 was an extraordinary accomplishment. Some have called this unprecedented agreement “the legal equivalent of a Hoover Dam.” The MOA represents a special kind of accomplishment in community development – the creation of a “watershed community of interest.” This community is described in the MOA as “shar[ing] the common goal of protecting and enhancing the environmental integrity of the Watershed and the social and economic vitality of the Watershed communities.” The MOA was signed by approximately 40 upstate towns and villages, environmental groups, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), New York State, and New York City (NYC). The agreement serves as a blueprint for NYC’s watershed management strategy for water sources west of the Hudson River. It cost approximately one billion dollars over 10 years. Figure 9.1 displays a map of the watershed and highlights some of its prominent features.

Watershed partnerships draw together diverse stakeholder groups to collectively negotiate the management of their water resources. A policy network analysis is used to examine the rural–urban governance partnership formed to protect Cheney Lake Reservoir, the drinking water source for Wichita, KS. Vertical and horizontal linkages were critical in the creation of a partnership between agricultural producers in the watershed, via the Cheney Lake Watershed Inc. (CLWI) organization, and the City of Wichita in which both sides recognized shared ownership and responsibility for the reservoir.

Community-based watershed organizations (CWOs) are non-governmental, non-profit, voluntary organizations with a water-related theme or mission. Interview data collected from 56 Pennsylvania CWOs are examined for evidence of social outcomes from collaborative management approaches that include local citizens. CWO members’ actions have multiple effects in their communities: environmental education and behavior change, and positive “unintended” outcomes that build local capacity at multiple levels for leadership, partnerships and policy impact.

Many U.S. waterbodies classified by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “impaired” will ultimately require formal watershed management plans to reduce loading of specific pollutants. Citizen involvement in the planning process is crucial for the plans to be locally appropriate and sustainable. Excessively high levels of atrazine herbicide in Vandalia, Missouri’s drinking water reservoir led to the need for a watershed management plan that reduced atrazine levels to acceptable public health levels. University of Missouri Extension forged relationships among farmers, agencies and townspeople and facilitated community dialog that led to development of watershed management plan citizens were willing to act on.

Sometimes changes in landscape management for the protection and improvement of water resources are the result of legislative force and economic sanctions rather than the direct influence of citizens. Data collected among local landowners, City of Lincoln planners, agencies and conservation organizations are used to evaluate the results of invoking the national Endangered Species Act as a strategy for protecting a unique ecosystem, the Eastern Nebraska Saline Wetlands. Difficulties in resource management decisions are presented by examining the conflicting perspectives of an expanding urban area, agricultural interests and multiple levels of government.

Collaborative partnerships for environmental education and implementation between Land Grant University programs, tribal colleges and the tribes themselves which manage land and waters within their borders have proven difficult to establish and maintain. Lack of trust among the parties results, in part, from lack of knowledge about tribal culture, authority and decision-making mechanisms. Cooperation between Kansas State University, Haskell Indian Nations University and the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in a successful riparian restoration project which has become the basis for ongoing collaboration to improve natural resource management demonstrates that trust can be built.

The on-farm performance-based environmental management approach gives farmers direct feedback (using agronomic indicators) that help them evaluate how their daily management practices affect local water quality. The approach encourages flexible and adaptive management at the farm level. A council of local farmers in Iowa’s Hewitt Creek watershed has modeled a resident-led performance incentive program that has reduced pollutant loading and improved soil and water quality. Interviews with council members document the individual and group social processes that changed farmers’ knowledge and actions.

Agriculture is the principal source of impairment in the highly degraded Sugar Creek watershed in Northeast Ohio. The Sugar Creek Partners is a farmer-led grass roots watershed group in Upper Sugar Creek that has voluntarily pursued education and taken collective responsibility to implement conservation and remediation practices in their watershed. Social research on the Partners reveals the group’s structure, scope and connection to the community and the stages by which the group took ownership of agricultural impairments and their responsibility to take action on their own farms. Beliefs and core values of their local community are critical elements in addressing water quality issues by a consensus, grass roots process.

A broad array of factors shape producers’ decisions and management systems and in turn affect water quality outcomes. Many of these factors relate directly to farmers’ personal and social identity as environmental stewards, their awareness of water quality as a local problem, and how they think about the co-production of agricultural products and environmental services. A series of farmer interviews demonstrate how personal knowledge, experience and management routines influence farmer decision making, and point to a need for a better understanding of these influences. Sustainable improvements in water quality will require farmers reconstruct their frame of reference to include ecosystem management considerations.

Public programs aimed at reducing the environmental impact of ­agriculture traditionally rely on positive or negative sanctions for producers to implement the expert prescriptions of technical specialists. A performance-based management approach offers the option of rewarding producers for environmental outcomes through the use of quantitative and qualitative indicators of water and soil quality impact. Extension agronomy specialists can engage watershed cooperators in participatory education, using producers’ technical and economic questions as entry points to also educate about environmental impacts in the context of their individual operations and interests. When producers’ science-based knowledge of water ­quality outcomes is increased, they will adopt and adapt self-selected ­practices by a systems approach that can lead to continuous improvement.

There is increasing recognition among agencies, extension and other public programs with environmental missions that individuals and communities are essential components in solving the problems of water protection and improvement. However, the social science research base that underlies social practice still lags far behind that of the physical and natural sciences. The goal of this volume has been to make the latest theories as well as quantitative and qualitative evidence about citizen participation accessible to the specialists and technical staff who regularly work with watershed residents and communities. This science is necessary if citizen capacities are to be fostered and encouraged.