NATIONAL
INTERLOCAL AGREEMENT BUILDS PARTNERSHIPS AND RAISES FUNDS «*£
ESTUARY
PROGRAM
A formal Interlocal Agreement in Tampa Bay, Florida, has helped ensure sustained funding to the region's estuary program since 2000, and generates at
least $415,000 in cash each year as a match toward EPA funding.
J Established in 1990, the Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP) has worked diligently to involve local governments and Tampa Bay area citizens in its activi-
ties and in 1998 adopted a formal Interlocal Agreement that committed 15 partners to achieving the goals of the program's bay restoration plan. Partners
included city, county, and state governments, a water management district, a regional planning council, a port authority, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
THE NATIONAL ESTUARY PROGRAM IN ACTION
Tampa Bay Estuary Program
Goals of the bay restoration plan
focus on restoring and sustain-
ing a healthier bay that will sup-
port recreational and commer-
cial uses. Goals are related to
improving water and sediment
quality, restoring seagrass beds
and coastal habitats, and reduc-
ing bacterial contamination.
Partners also committed to im-
proving fish and wildlife regula-
tion and enforcement, managing
dredging and dredged material,
and increasing public education
and involvement.
TBEP's success in reaching con-
sensus on the Interlocal Agree-
ment can serve as a model for
similar efforts by other commu-
nity-based programs:
• Having a champion kept the
process moving. The water man-
agement district's representative
on the TBEP Policy Board, an ex-
perienced contract attorney,
conceived the idea of the agree-
ment, drafted it, and worked to
build consensus among stake-
holders and overcome obstacles
in the process.
• Long-term stakeholder rela-
tionships supported consensus.
The Tampa Bay community has
EFFECTIVE
EFFICIENT
ADAPTIVE
COLLABORATIVE
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been working together on bay
management and protection for
25 years, ever since the first Bay
Area Scientific Information Sym-
posium (BASIS) in 1982. Several
milestones followed BASIS that
built a tradition of regional coop-
eration among bay area scien-
tists and resource managers and
fostered consensus on the Inter-
local Agreement.
ment would be a good invest-
ment for the partners. It was es-
timated that the added cost each
year to TBEP's partners for im-
plementing the restoration plan
was insignificant compared to
their overall budgets.
Visit www.tbep.org to learn
more about this and other TBEP
efforts.
• Incentives encouraged partici-
pation. For example, participa-
tion in the Estuary Program may
have been spurred, in part, by a
desire to ensure that the pro-
gram followed a non-regulatory
approach to resource manage-
ment. Regulators agreed to ex-
tend reasonable flexibility in per-
mitting projects of TBEP partners
that helped achieve the goals of
the bay restoration plan.
Further, a track record of afford-
able, successful demonstrative
projects showed that the agree-
EPA's National Estuary Program
(NEP) is a unique and successful
coastal watershed-based program
established in 1987 under the
Clean Water Act Amendments.
The NEP involves the public and
collaborates with partners to pro-
tect, restore, and maintain the wa-
ter quality and ecological integrity
of 28 estuaries of national signifi-
cance located in 18 coastal states
and Puerto Rico.
For more information about the
NEP go to www.epa.gov/owow/
estuaries.
The NEP: Implementing the Clean Water Act in ways that are Effective, Efficient, Adaptive, and Collaborative.
EPA-842F09001
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