National Extension Water Quality Outreach Education

As watershed organizations develop, facilitate a form of governance that is democratic and able to generate outcomes considered legitimate by all affected parties:

Provide a foundation of accepted scientific knowledge about the scope of the problems and the underlying biological-chemical-physical-socio-economic factors at work;
Develop rules to inform the planning process that are accepted as ‘‘right’’ and just by the stakeholders and provide for a process through which interested individuals (stakeholders)develop, debate, reject, and accept plans to deal withthe identified problems while promising to reach stipulated goals including a process for making the plan known to all affected parties;
Establish an accepted process for implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of the plan and its recommendations in an impartial way including a way to amend the plan or recommendation in light of new scientific information or changingsocial and/or environmental conditions.

Bayesian Belief Network decision support systems are most effectively used as part of a participatory process. It is imperative to get active involvement of stakeholders in this process for a proper construction of variables, selection of states, identification of links, etc.

Before designing training, survey local officials to learn if they:

Build skills among water outreach professionals to ask the right questions about the:

Build water leadership capacity among young professionals, especially:

Build watershed council ability to:

Capable institutions are an essential element of effective integrated water resource management. An institutional assessment process investigating policy, organizational and operational elements, are effective tools when designed and analyzed by stakeholders. Assessment criteria include:

Design communication and professional development opportunities for outreach educators that will motivate them to implement a priority program because:

The program fits their job description

Design communication and professional development opportunities for outreach educators that will motivate them to implement a priority program because:

The program has social significance

Design communication and professional development opportunities for outreach educators that will motivate them to implement a priority program because:

The program is part of work in a team

Design communication and professional development opportunities for outreach educators that will motivate them to implement a priority program because:

They understand the program

Design partnership development training to build understanding and skills for partnership success factors and themes identified through the Leach and Pelky (2001) meta-analysis of empirical literature. (see Table 2, p. 382 for detailed list of these associated with each factor).

Focus on factors influencing partnership success:

Drinking water education for citizens and the private sector can build capacity for implementing groundwater protection by increasing individual knowledge and skills for protecting groundwater, and assessing the credibility of policy and financial initiatives.

Drinking water education for managers and government officials should address proper management in 5 risk categories: technical, financial, institutional, political, and social. These include: appropriate hydrogeological analyses required for local groundwater protection planning; allocation of adequate resources for groundwater protection; the quality of laws, regulations, policies, plans, and organizational structure that governs groundwater protection; leadership that can provide vision, direction, and partnerships with other communities; and the quantity and quality of citizen particiation in groundwater protection initiatives.

Each type of stakeholder group (e.g. customer, researcher, water utility manager) may value risks related to water management choices differently, and value who is most likely to best represent their interests differently.

Education to protect drinking water quality should focus, at least in part, on water utility managers and local government officials responsible for ensuring reliable and safe drinking water.

Emphasize effective leadership when encouraging or facilitating watershed group formation. Watershed groups rate leadership as more important to effective group formation than support factors such as staff assistance or financial support.

Encourage water utilities to adopt a risk management strategy and to identify strategic risks, such as risks to a safe, acceptable, and reliable water supply. Risks for this category, for example, can include failure to meet requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act; inappropriate catchment management; and failure to plan for growth and changes in demand. [NOTE: Finding based on one case study.]

Enhance stakeholder interest in restoration efforts by:

Expanding program goals to include additional physical restoration approaches to improve habitat or recreational enhancement as a component of community education and involvement.

Enhance stakeholder interest in restoration efforts by:

Increasing use of GPS and GIS for mapping, storage, analysis and presentation of spatial information, both internally and to stakeholders.

Evaluate conservation professionals’ effectiveness in using models and demonstration tools and in their use of skills taught in the workshops

Explicitly recognize the implications of organizational affiliation when designing policies that foster collaboration in watersheds. Organizational culture and preexisting constituent relationships may dictate definitions of the problem and the range of preferred alternatives in agency-affiliated partnerships.

Facilitate school-based watershed education programs through interactive resources and communication among groups using an interactive website

Focus on a geographic area:

Define the geographical area where environmental intervention is crucial (Cooper, 1995).

Focus on a geographic area:

Focus outreach initiatives on a geographic area with a targeted audience

Follow classroom exercises and visual examples by applying learning in the field.

For conservation professionals:

For watershed management decison-making on tribal lands

How a watershed group is formed may influence its effectiveness.

In advising watershed councils and technical teams, provide training to enhance quality efforts in the following parameters of the collaborative process: centralization vs decentralization of the decision-making process; the tension between local/lay knowledge and expert knowledge; scale and inclusiveness of collaborative decision-making; tensions between ecological/scientific time frames and management/constituent time frames; expenses and agency resources required for collaborative decision making.

In stormwater communication efforts, focus on TV media time during local news; and use radio to target specific markets.

In water-related organizations, include stakeholders as Board members

Investigate watershed council community involvement characteristics to promote effective engagement:

Involve citizens in a watershed planning group by facilitating their understanding of the problem/situation.

Link economic risk to over-application of nutrients, a common practice for ensuring maximum yield.

Participating as part of community and watershed groups is more likely to lead to learning new information and making management changes.

Participation in water management decisions can be improved by assessing stakeholder perceptions of the risk of potential problems, and the impact on other stakeholders of these perceptions.

Pennsylvania-specific recommendations for how municipal environmental advisory councils can be effective.

Public participation is used most effectively when working to identify watershed plan goals

Strengthen public participation by addressing: lack of resources (time, money, staff), lack of rules of participation, lack of in-depth involvement of authorities, lack of hands-on use of Bayesian Belief Network decision support systems for stakeholders, and a lack of professional supervision of the decision-support process.

Support watershed councils in promoting civic engagement through:

Support watershed planning groups with assistance from agencies.

Teach water science and build environmentally responsible behavior among students through “service-learning” experiences that apply principles of interaction and continuity: both of which are significant features of education that lead to learning.

For example, provide educators, students and District staff with opportunities to participate in public lands activities. This experience has been shown to increase student performance and interest in school, student concern for protecting and conserving the environment, and educator motivation.

The complexity of the science–policy interface is a feature of integrated water resources management (IWRM) and that the norms of scientific uncertainty in the face of competing theories (held by their protagonists with greater certainty) obliges scientists to take a more active role in sensitively managing the advice-to-policy process in order to improve management of water within river basins.

The use of Bayesian Belief Network decision support systems for groundwater management requires full involvement of stake holders during the inplementation phase. Bayesian Belief Network decision support systems organise the body of knowledge in any given area by mapping out cause-and-effect relationships among key variables and encoding them with numbers that represent the extent to which one variable is likely to affect another.

To address the complexity of water resource management problems, combine the technological dimension with the social dimension, based on stakeholders involvement; use decision-support tools in a shared platform through which the debate is organised and the different sources of knowledge are integrated.

To address the complexity of water resource management problems, engage stakeholders in structuring, i.e. systematizing the knowledge which emerges during the participative process, in order to make it comprehensible for the other participants and functional for the decision process. Cognitive mapping (concepts linked to form chains of action-oriented argumentation) and analysis is an example of a system that can be used to produce different points of view and information, in order to enrich a collective ‘‘knowledge base’’ with creative ideas and concepts around the problem.

To assess customer satisfaction with community water conservation programs, consider evaluating: effectiveness in reducing water use; effectiveness of enforcement; fairness; overall satisfaction with the program; necessity of the water use restrictions; and necessity of the water use bans.

To assure that watershed groups can play a valuable substantive role in states’ watershed management programs, encourage active recruiting to include a variety of perspectives. As collaborative policies are developed, sponsors must strike a balance to achieve an appropriate balance of participants to address each concern.

To assure that watershed groups can play a valuable substantive role in states’ watershed management programs, encourage and maintain heterogeneous participation in watershed partnerships as they work through assessment, planning or day-to-day operations of the partnership, wrestle with internal differences, and establish new collective goals and strategies to achieve them.

To facilitate students' ability to conceptualize the groundwater environment, engage teachers in learning how to develop appropriate assessment materials. For example, model use of preassessment to assess students’ groundwater understandings using various types of multiplechoice items, open-ended questions, and drawing prompts. Ask teachers to analyze what types of information each item provides and construct an appropriate instructional plan based on the responses.

To facilitate students' ability to conceptualize the groundwater environment, measure understandings of the concepts using: drawings, concept maps, and open-ended questions.

To facilitate students' ability to conceptualize the groundwater environment, teach instructors the fundamentals of assessing for conceptual understanding of science concepts. For example, the teacher can identify what language the students are using to describe groundwater and consequently what possible alternative conceptions may need to be explicitly addressed.

To facilitate students' ability to conceptualize the groundwater environment, use the following instructional tools: rock specimens, three-dimensional physical models, and fieldwork.

To help landowners learn new information, about riparian areas, landowners prefer that staff characteristics include knowledge about riparian management and understanding of the practicalities of living and working near riparian areas.

To improve integrated water resource management by addressing existing views held by various local entities and insufficient involvement of outside researchers in local decision making process, scientists need to work on two key fronts:

To increase understanding of complex concepts related to groundwater:

To teach recognition of key aquatic insects use narrated slide discussion and provide a live insect for reference

Two-way communication methods, particularly door-to-door contact where possible, are more successful in soliciting participation for watershed planning initiatives than one-way communication (information) methods.

Use Bayesian Belief Network decision support systems for complex decision-making, including structural learning, strategic integration and breakdown of barriers between different domains. But high level of frustration can occur when citizen input meetings lack structure and trail off into local and personal problems.

Use a comparison strip to provide the farmer with opportunity to make their own evaluation of pros and cons of a new procedure

Use activities and evaluation to help identify barriers and verify success

Use best education practices in organizing environmental field days for youth

Use participatory, watershed-based planning as an effective technique for building public awareness and interagency coordination.

Use website resources:

Use these outreach components and apply best practices for each:

Watershed-based, participatory planning can be helpful in making watershed data publicly available and in establishing plan legitimacy.

When encouraging or facilitating the activities of a watershed group, consider group purpose and needs. Distinguish whether the group wants to focus on educational and social benefits, the ability to influence policy, or create on-the-ground improvements.

When involving the public in green space planning: use survey responses to group residents according to their interest in recreation, in planning participation, or no interest.

Develop participation programs suited to each group's unique characteristics.

When involving the public in green space planning:

Survey public perceptions of stream corridors, including: recreational use, nature and scenery, sanitary and safety maintenance, flooding, stream access, and lighting.

When water utilities are developing a risk management strategy, encourage them to communicate with stakeholder groups, such as employees, customers, suppliers, lenders, investors, regulators, communiites, and the public. [NOTE: Finding based on one case study.]

When working on riparian issues, allow the local community to drive the process, identify the timelines, and identify the way in which they wish to manage riparian areas. Use awareness, team and tool building, community-based action, and monitoring.

When working on riparian issues, employ multiple interactions and a mix of many extension methods to offer opportunities for diverse information and ideas and methods of providing them, and to meet individualized learning needs. Methods may include presentations, field days, workshops, individual landowner visits, riparian health inventories and reports, written materials, technical advice, and web site information on riparian areas and grazing management.

When working on riparian issues, give the community the opportunity to build a relationship with extension staff, to build trust and understanding, and to allow enough time for multiple interactions to occur.

Work with a collaborative to provide consistent storm water messages across neighborhoods in a large city.

76 Total Findings