-------
-------
CHESAPEAKE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
ADOPTION STATEMENT
B,yprogram COMMUNITY WATERSHED INITIATIVE
r n support of the Community Watershed Initiative Directive (97-3), we reaffirm our commitment to
increase our emphasis on watershed restoration, planning and management at a small watershed scale and to promote
integration of Chesapeake Bay Program restoration goals at that level.
WE REAFFIRM OUR BELIEF THAT the cumulative
benefits derived from many community-based water-
shed projects will mean continued progress toward a health-
ier bay.
WE RECOGNIZE the critical role of state and local gov-
ernments, soil and water conservation districts, watershed
organizations and other organizations concerned with small
watershed restoration and seek to ensure that resources are
available to assist ir.^e e::or:s where :h;y currently exist and
where they may be needed. We further recognize that targeting
limited resources based on available regional and state water-
shed planning and analysis will be necessary.
WE BELIEVE that the efforts of the Chesapeake Bay
Program should not duplicate existing efforts that successfully
address Program goals and objectives and that the Program and
its partners should learn from those efforts and, where ap-
propriate, interact with them. Likewise, we believe that
community watershed organizations can leam from the work of
the Chesapeake Bay Program and, where appropriate, modify
their activities to effectively work in support of Chesapeake Bay
Program goals and objective;.
WE BELIEVE that successful efforts at the community
watershed scale should be recognized and promoted so that
others can learn from them.
V\7 7E THEREFORE COMMIT to the implementation of the Community Watershed Initiative Strategy and will do that which is
W within our power to focus our individual efforts towards the goals of Directive 97-3.
WE DIRECT the Chesapeake Bay Program to establish a Community Watershed Task Force to coordinate and oversee the
implementation of the Community Watershed Strategy.
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency
Environmental Science Center
701 Mapes Road CHESAPEAKE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
Ft. Meade, MD 20755-5350
Date Decembers, 1998
FOR THE STATE OF MARYLAND
FOR COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
FOR THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY COMMISSION
FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
-------
Introduction
As directed by the Chesapeake Executive Council in 1997 (see Appendix I), the Community
Watershed Initiative offers a framework to enable the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) to better
support community watershed efforts for the benefit of the small watersheds within the
Chesapeake Bay basin. The challenge of this strategy is to promote implementation of
Chesapeake Bay Program priorities at the small watershed scale. Implementation at this scale
will recognize the value and accomplishments of existing state, regional and local efforts and
improve program integration, delivery and results.
The Community Watershed Initiative Strategy supports and builds upon previous Chesapeake
Executive Council actions including the 1992 Amendments to the Chesapeake Bay Agreement
(which called for the development of tributary strategies), the Local Government Participation
Action Plan and the Priorities for Action for Land, Growth and Stewardship. Each of these
previous documents promotes sustainable local communities and watersheds and complements a
number of the actions proposed in this strategy.
This strategy was developed through a collaborative process involving Chesapeake Bay Program
partners and representatives of watershed organizations, watershed-based non-profits and local
governments.
Why a Community Watershed Strategy?
The citizens of the Chesapeake Bay watershed often make their connection to the Bay at a small
scale — through their neighborhoods, their communities and the local environment that surrounds
them. It is also at this level that decisions are made every day that affect land use, infrastructure,
water quality and the environment. Depending upon the decisions made, these actions will either
systematically advance efforts to protect the health of the Bay or incrementally impair the Bay
Program's ability to achieve watershed-wide restoration objectives. Therefore, the Community
Watershed Initiative Strategy seeks to address three key needs at the community watershed level
in order to promote watershed protection and restoration:
**• Strengthening the partnerships between the Chesapeake Bay Program partners, local
governments and community watershed efforts will enhance collaboration in efforts to restore
and protect the Chesapeake Bay and its watersheds.
*»• Improving access to information and technical and financial assistance that assist community
watershed efforts.
*»• Building organizations and improving organizational skills is a key to success at the
community watershed level. By serving as a catalyst and a resource, the Chesapeake Bay
Program can assist in the development, growth and success of local community watershed
efforts.
Community Watershed Initiative Strategy
-------
Implementing This Strategy
In order to address these identified needs and to further the implementation of this strategy, we
recommend the creation of the Community Watershed Task Force of the Chesapeake Bay
Program.
I. Task Force Mission and Composition
The Community Watershed Task Force will provide overall coordination for implementation of
this Strategy. Where appropriate, the existing committees of the Chesapeake Bay Program will
implement the activities recommended in the initiative.
The Task Force will:
• provide a point of contact within the Chesapeake Bay Program for community
watershed efforts.
• determine the type of assistance the Bay Program can provide to existing
community watershed efforts as well as newly-forming community watershed
efforts.
• seek to ensure that the Bay Program and its partners have in place mechanisms
to address the goals, objectives and needs of community watershed efforts and,
at the same time, that community watershed effort leaders understand their
connection and contribution to the Bay Program's goals and objectives.
• be established for a two-year implementation period, after which they will
provide recommendations to the Chesapeake Executive Council on how best to
continue the Community Watershed Initiative and to integrate small watershed
support efforts within the Chesapeake Bay Program.
• include participants with Bay-wide or local watershed experience, and involve
the chair or a designee of each existing Bay Program subcommittee,
representatives of selected community watershed organizations and local
governments from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of
Columbia, regional non-profits, signatories to the Chesapeake Bay Agreement,
Chesapeake Bay Program advisory committees and other relevant parties.
Community Watershed Initiative Strategy
-------
//. Task Force Objectives and Priorities
OBJECTIVE 1:
STRENGTHEN AND ENHANCE EXISTING STRUCTURES OF
FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL ASSISTANCE
Findings: An array of programs currently exist at all levels that could be focused to provide
assistance to community watershed efforts. However, many of these programs
currently are not able or were not intended to specifically address the partnership-
building emphasis of this strategy.
Action: The Task Force shall undertake an evaluation of the relevant activities of the
committees of the Chesapeake Bay Program and its state, federal and local
partners with the goal of strengthening or developing mechanisms that build
partnerships between federal and/or state providers and community watershed
efforts. Wherever possible, specific projects and issues well suited for
collaborative efforts should be identified which could include efforts to restore
riparian forest buffers, submerged aquatic vegetation, fish passage or broader
issues related to land use decision-making and watershed planning.
OBJECTIVE 2: IDENTIFY FUNDING SOURCES
Findings: Community watershed efforts are often limited by both the amount and type of
funding they receive. Although there is an increasing amount of funds available
for watershed-based work, the funding is not always in a form easily available to
small watershed efforts. In addition we recognize that funding support for
emerging community watershed efforts for planning, facilitation, and staff is
critically needed to nurture the growth and success of community-based efforts.
These emerging efforts can also benefit from assistance which helps them develop
the organizational structure sufficient to sustain program development and
implementation.
Actions: The Task Force should:
• seek methods of funding which minimize administrative costs, so that
watershed organizations can benefit fully from the amounts available
while at the same time maintaining reasonable accountability
requirements.
• evaluate relevant funding sources to explore the applicability of current
public mechanisms to community watershed efforts and explore ways to
better utilize existing funds for community-based efforts without
diminishing current implementation programs.
Community Watershed Initiative Strategy
-------
• identify potential partnerships that would improve access to private
funding sources.
• address organizational needs including technical assistance in meeting
requirements to receive funding (e.g. IRS recognition of non-profit status.)
• incorporate into the Chesapeake Bay Program Subcommittee Budget
Guidance consideration of community watershed-scale projects.
OBJECTIVE 3: ENSURE CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM TOOLS,
INFORMATION AND ACTIVITIES ARE RELEVANT TO
COMMUNITY WATERSHED EFFORTS
Findings: We recognize that much of the data and information produced by the Chesapeake
Bay Program is not in a form relevant, usable or accessible by community
watershed efforts.
Actions: The Task Force should create a clearing house function within the Chesapeake
Bay Program and its partner jurisdictions to ensure that program information and
activities are available to community watershed efforts. The clearing house should
use all possible means of distribution to make the information widely accessible
and focus on the following:
• a guidebook, directory or similar mechanism, should it be determined that
one does not currently exist, of state and federal programs relevant to
community watershed management and planning.
• source and kinds of practical information to community watershed efforts
on topics relevant to their projects which could include map preparation,
water quality monitoring and data interpretation, habitat protection
techniques and other needs identified by the Task Force.
• the use of forums for communication between community watershed
organizations, local governments, soil and water conservation districts and
resource specialists to share direct experience in these activities with
others working to promote watershed protection; and
• hands-on projects or case histories or projects that support Chesapeake
Bay Program goals and can be implemented in a variety of subwatersheds
by those organizations that wish to undertake them.
Community Watershed Initiative Strategy
-------
OBJECTIVE 4: ENHANCE THE CAPACITY OF COMMUNITY-WATERSHED
ORGANIZATIONS TO UNDERTAKE SUSTAINED
RESTORATION EFFORTS
Finding: The ultimate success of community watershed efforts will be largely dependent on
their abilities to sustain themselves independent of any support they may receive
from the Chesapeake Bay Program or its partners. Assistance can take the form of
issue specific technical or financial assistance or it can be through ongoing
training and information sharing to help an organization become more effective.
In addition, organization to organization contact which promotes mentoring and
information sharing can benefit such efforts. Further, the issue of building
organizational capacity is relevant to areas where community watershed efforts
are absent or in early stages of development. Building an infrastructure of efforts
in areas where they do not currently exist will also yield long-term local and bay-
wide results.
Actions: The Task Force will address the following priority areas:
• Access to technical assistance to assist efforts in developing an
organizational structure that will allow them to receive and use financial
and technical assistance.
• The development of a catalog of existing community watershed efforts in
the Chesapeake Bay Watershed in terms of the issues addressed and the
geographic areas covered in order to identify areas which might benefit
from more intensive community watershed efforts.
• The promotion of forums, meetings, web-based information sharing and
other methods of linking community watershed efforts for the purpose of
sharing success, information and strategies for building successful
organizations or efforts which could set the stage for a more formalized
mentoring program.
• The development and use of self-evaluation techniques that will enable
community watershed efforts to measure their progress and success in a
form that can be easily communicated to the Chesapeake Bay Program
partners, local officials, the press, other organizations and the public.
• The continued use of existing Chesapeake Bay Program recognition
programs to promote community watershed efforts.
Community Watershed Initiative Strategy
-------
Expectations for This Strategy
This strategy focuses on the building of'partnerships between community-based efforts and the
Chesapeake Bay Program. The following guidance is offered to inform Chesapeake Bay Program
participants and potential community-based partners as to what they should expect as this
strategy is implemented.
The Chesapeake Bav Program will encourage:
• Community watershed efforts that address and support the goals of the CBP.
• Community watershed efforts that are collaborative efforts with interested organizations and
adjacent localities. Community-based efforts can share watershed data, coordinate capital
improvement budgets with watershed protection strategy priorities, facilitate community-
based watershed planning efforts, among other things, to strengthen local level efforts.
Community watershed efforts should anticipate that;
*•- The Chesapeake Bay Program will recognize that many of the community watershed efforts
are beneficial to the wider-scale initiatives of the Chesapeake Bay Program as pieces of a
larger restoration effort.
• The Chesapeake Bay Program will work with community watershed organizations and local
governments to identify the linkages that exist between their goals and those of the
Chesapeake Bay Program.
• The Chesapeake Bay Program will seek to make relevant Chesapeake Bay Program
information, tools and data more user-friendly and accessible to community watershed
organizations and local governments.
• The Chesapeake Bay Program will strengthen the communication with community watershed
efforts in order to utilize their knowledge and perspectives across the entire watershed.
Conclusion
The Chesapeake Bay Program is defined by its efforts to restore water quality and living
resources. Cooperation and partnerships among the participating states, federal agencies and a
broad range of stake holders is the defining element of its success. Through these cooperative
and integrated efforts, the Chesapeake Bay Program has endeavored to protect habitat, improve
water quality, minimize the adverse environmental impacts of land use and development, provide
quality environmental education, facilitate public access to the Bay and its tributaries and
encourage public participation in the restoration. We believe that this strategy, if fully
implemented, will advance all of these efforts in a way that is meaningful to the thousands of
community watersheds within the basin.
Community Watershed Initiative Strategy 6
-------
APPENDIX I
Chesapeake Bay Program
CHESAPEAKE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
DIRECTIVE NO. 97.3
COMMUNITY WATERSHED INITIATIVE
he restoration of water quality and living resources is the principal
goal of the Chesapeake Bay Program. Through the cooperative efforts of the Bay Program partners, we have
endeavored to strengthen and coordinate our actions to protect our living resources, ensure clean and
healthy water, minimize the impacts of land use and development, provide quality environmental education,
allow for public access to the Bay and its tributaries and encourage public participation in the restoration
campaign.
The development of our tributary strategies for nutrient reduction has been the cornerstone of our water
quality effort. The full implementation of those strategies will continue to be the focus of our efforts in the
future. Local governments, watershed groups, and citizens are key partners in the sustained implementation
of our tributary strategies and in the achievement of our broader Bay Program goals and commitments.
Our multijurisdictional covenants to restore the Chesapeake Bay are now more than two decades old.
Many specific goals and commitments have been developed that allow us to focus our efforts and measure
our progress. We recognize that supporting community-based watershed planning and engaging local orga-
nizations, citizens, and local governments will strengthen the foundation for continued progress toward a
healthier Chesapeake Bay by integrating the various programs and goals of water quality improvement, habi-
tat restoration and growth management. We believe that successful implementation of many of these
initiatives will only happen if there is active involvement of the community at the subwatershed scale; there-
fore, the Executive Council commits to launching the Community Watershed Initiative as a way to
encourage and support the application of our commitments at the local level.
HROUGH OUR EFFORTS TO DATE, WE HAVE:
Committed, in the 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement and
subsequent documents, to restoring the Chesapeake Bay
and its tributaries as an integrated ecosystem and
adopted a series of goals related to living resources,
water quality, land use, education, Bay access, and pub-
lic participation that include:
• reducing the nutrients reaching the main stem of the
Chesapeake Bay by 40 percent by the year 2000,
• implementing a basinwide toxics reduction and pre-
vention strategy,
• preserving and restoring streamside forest buffers,
• removing stream blockages to restore migratory fish
habitat.
• protecting, enhancing and restoring tidal and non-
tidal wetlands,
• addressing land use, growth, and stewardship issues,
and
• improving water quality in the Bay and its tributaries
as the critical link to restoring living resources.
Committed, in the 1992 Amendments to the Chesapeake
Bay Agreement, to working in concert with local govern-
ments and citizens, to implement tributary-specific
strategies that would meet main stem nutrient goals and
achieve water quality requirements necessary to restore
living resources in both the main stem and the tribu-
taries of the Chesapeake Bay.
Recognized, through the Tributary Strategies and other
land stewardship-related initiatives, that community-
based watershed planning can yield positive results by
strengthening the foundation for continued progress
toward a healthier Chesapeake Bay, integrating various
programs and goals for water quality, habitat restoration,
and growth management at a subwatershed scale.
Adopted in 1996, the Riparian Forest Buffer Initiative,
which recognized the importance of engaging new
-------
partners to assist in achieving the Initiative's goal of con-
serving existing forests along streams and shorelines and
restoring riparian forests on 2,010 miles of stream and
shoreline in the Bay watershed by 2010.
Adopted in 1996, the Local Government Participation
Action Plan, which identified the cntical role of local gov-
ernments in land use management, stream comdor pro-
tection and infrastructure improvements and c.ommitted
to outreach, support and recognition of local government
actions in support of the goals of the Bay Program.
TO FURTHER OUR COMMITMENT TO ENCOUR-
AGE COMMUNITY-BASED IMPLEMENTATION,
WE WILL:
* Convene an open and inclusive process within the
Chesapeake Bay Program for the development of a
Community Watershed Strategy that implements this
Initiative, seeking the counsel of citizens, landowners,
federal, state, and local governments, nonprofit organi-
zations, business and industry and others.
THEREFORE, WE DIRECT THAT THE CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM PARTNERS DEVELOP A COMMU-
NITY WATERSHED STRATEGY FOR EJOECUTIVE COUNCIL CONSIDERATION AT THE 1998 ANNUAL
MEETING THAT ADDRESSES EACH OF THE FOLLOWING ELEMENTS:
The acknowledgment that each subwatershed unit has a role
to play in meeting Baywide goals for water quality improve-
ment and habitat enhancement, but that the approaches they
use must reflect the unique characteristics of the local water-
sheds and their human inhabitants.
The integration at the subwatershed scale of Bay Program
commitments related to nutrients, toxics, submerged aquatic
vegetation, riparian forest buffers, fish passage, land growth
and stewardship, local government involvement, public
participation, and other applicable goals.
The development of success criteria to enable local water-
shed partners to measure accomplishments.
The identification and enhancement of mechanisms to assist
local governments and watershed groups in obtaining neces-
sary scientific information, technical expertise, and financial
resources through education, training, and networking forums
to better enable them to assess their local natural resources,
implement environmentally-sensitive management practices,
and accommodate sensible growth during their community
watershed planning efforts.
The identification of opportunities to link current state and
federal efforts related to environmental, historical, cultural,
and growth management programs to community watershed
management and planning and impediments to such efforts,
including recommendations for improvements.
Guidelines for the delineation of subwatersheds that are
community-defined, include a basin or a collection of
basins, regardless of political boundaries, and are smaller in
scale than the watershed of a major tributary.
DATE: October 30, 1997
FOR THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
FOR THE STATE OF MARYLAND
FOR THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY COMMISSION
-------
APPENDIXII
Definitions
A community watershed is a basin or a collection of basins that is smaller in scale than the
watershed of a major Bay tributary. By definition it is represented by the collaborative efforts
of individuals, organizations, governments and others that have a common bond, mission or
commitment related to the protection, restoration or enjoyment of their common watershed.
Community watershed efforts ideally are partnerships among individuals, organizations
and local governments. Collectively, they share a commitment to protect and restore their
watersheds for community use and enjoyment and/or for its importance in the restoration of
Chesapeake Bay. Whatever the makeup of the effort, the defining characteristic is that the
organization is local or regional and dedicated to the sustained implementation of measures
to protect, restore or enhance the environments of their watersheds.
Chesapeake Bav Program goals refer to those goals, policies, objectives and actions as
defined by the 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement, as amended, as well as directives and
policy documents adopted by the Chesapeake Executive Council.
Chesapeake Bav Program is the cooperative partnership among the states of Maryland,
Pennsylvania and Virginia; the District of Columbia; the Chesapeake Bay Commission, a
tri-state legislative body; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, representing the federal
government; and participating advisory committees. The Chesapeake Bay Program was
established by the 1983 Chesapeake Bay Agreement.
-------
------- |