Pathways for Getting to Better Water Quality: The Citizen Effect

This book presents studies of citizens’ individual and collective efforts to work through complex issues associated with watershed management. It offers insight and knowledge that can be used by those who are working to protect and improve U.S. waters.

This book is about accomplishing change in how land is managed in agricultural watersheds. Wide-ranging case studies repeatedly document that plans, policies, and regulations are not adequate substitutes for the empowerment of people. Ultimately change on the land is managed and accomplished by the people that live on land within each watershed.

Section I: Pathways.- Pathways to Better Water Quality.- Citizen Involvement.- Shared Leadership for Watershed Management.- Relationships, Connections, Influence and Power.- Turning Conflict into Citizen Participation and Power.- The Language of Conservation.- Section II: The Data.- Measuring the Citizen Effect: What Does Good Citizen Involvement Look Like?.- Regional Water Quality Concern and Environmental Attitudes.- Communities of Interest and the Negotiation of Watershed Management.- Upstream, Downstream: Forging Rural-Urban Partnerships for Shared Water Governance in Central Kansas.- Local Champions Speak Out: Pennsylvania’s Community Watershed Organizations.- Community Watershed Planning: Vandalia, Missouri.- Force and Economic Sanctions as Watershed Solutions.- Cross-cultural Collaboration for Riparian Restoration on Tribal Lands in Kansas.- Getting to Performance-based Outcomes at the Watershed Level.- A Farmer Learning Circle: The Sugar Creek Partners, Ohio.- Farmer Decision Makers: What are They Thinking?.- Sustainability of Environmental Management - the Role of Technical Assistance as an Educational Program.- Building Citizen Capacity.- Index.