Selected Archives of Volunteer Monitoring Listserv Discussions

Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:12:39 -0400
From: Joan Martin <jmartin@HRWC.ORG>
Subject: RE:[volmonitor] Moving committed volunteers to the next level - local
river protection

We have many great volunteers in our river monitoring program in
southeast Michigan and I want to engage some of the more committed ones
to encourage their local communities to institute legal measures that
will protect the river system from human effects. As an example, the
first legal measure that we will probably focus on is restricting
activities on the land lying adjacent to the streams.

It is very important to monitor our river system but we do not want to
just carefully measure its deterioration. After a few years of
monitoring, it is necessary to add an action component.

I am looking for ideas about good ways to implement a program of
assisting people to work as advisors with their local elected officials.
Please tell me about any sort of similar program that you know about,
either in your own location or elsewhere. Additionally, your ideas and
comments on such a program would interest me.

Hi Joan,

I'll be able to give a much more authoritative answer to your question after I see how things go with the Woods Creek Friends during the next five years or so! In the meantime, let me do a little crystal ball gazing.

1. I think that the starting point almost has to be the formation of subwatershed groups such as ours and a number of others in the Huron River watershed with which you are familiar. The success and effectiveness of these groups has been/will be greatly aided by HRWC support such as was provided to us by Ric and Dieter. They were perfect. This, unfortunately, does not guarantee a winner; there must be a committed cadre that is willing to learn and whose members work well together. How one arranges this I do not know; sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. Initially it looked like our group was going to be a disaster, but our "problem children" all dropped out very quickly.

2. We are finding the support of the local government folks to be invaluable. Matt Best and Dan Swallow provide us with expertise on a broad range of essential subjects, they have all sorts of contacts, and they have access to resources that are turning out to be very useful to us.

3. My guess is that we will be most effective in advising local governments after we have established that we know what we're talking about. That is, after we have successfully carried out a number of data-gathering projects and publicized the results, sponsored a public workshop or two (or more), acquired a reputation for providing accurate information clearly and conservatively, and avoided being used by political and other groups for their own agendas. It would also help to have a large enough membership to provide us with political clout should that be necessary.

4. I love the idea of working on regs to protect riparian buffer strips; that has been on my short list for quite a while.

Best of luck on this.

Dave

Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:08:39 -0500
From: Jackson.Peter@epamail.epa.gov
Subject: RE:[volmonitor] Moving committed volunteers to the next level - local
river protection

Joan, your post is a very important one, and I would be very interested
in the response. Also, I do not want to detract from the local focus of
your question, but I would suggest that it might also be of great
interest to ask people how they have used volunteer monitoring data to
encourage their state water monitoring agencies to become more engaged
in local watershed protection, whether through follow-up monitoring or
other actions designed to implement the Clean Water Act. I would leave
it to you to decide if you would like to see a broader response that
incorporates both local and state collaborations.

P.S. - it was very nice meeting you last week!
Pete Jackson
U.S. EPA Region 5 Volunteer Monitoring Coordinator

Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:41:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: F5creeks@aol.com
Subject: Re: [volmonitor] Moving committed volunteers to the next level - local
river ...

In much of California, for whatever reasons, volunteer monitoring has generally not been a basis for action. Groups, in my perception, tend to start with a perceived local issue or project. The successful ones build from there. In our area, the San Francisco Bay, serious problems (heavy metals, pyrethroids, etc.) are frequently not amenable to volunteer monitoring.

However, the tests the volunteers can do, and their incidental obsrvations, have often provided a basis for local action. Thus, documenting sewage in streams has led to both repairs and an ordinance requiring inspection and repair of private sewer laterals when buildings are sold. Findings of chloramines (toxic to aquatic life) have led to various action regarding water-main breaks. (I should note that this work has been facilitated by the US EPA Region 9 lab, which has a great program of providing the lab work for properly gathered samples.) And observations and reports of obvious problems -- photos and phone calls re stuff flowing down streams or storm drains -- have led to appropriate action of various sorts.

All this is by way of saying that yes, monitoring seems a bit empty if it doesn't lead to action. I am something of a contrarian in this, but I don't think you need excellent data to do this. You do need to build relationships with local governments by making your reports in a non-accusatory way, following up politely but firmly; and sticking with it, for months or years. Potential weapons to be used include cc'ing regulators at higher levels or elected officials, media publicity, statements at public meetings, posting photos on the internet, ad campaigns, and the like.

I strongly recommend that you NOT start with an issue such as regulating what people can do on their land next to water bodies, unless someone else very powerful has put it on the agenda and you are in a position to influence the outcome. This is an extremely controversial and divisive issue; most volunteers are not in it because they like to fight with their neighbors. Even if everyone has good will, solutions are not easy to work out; rights and wrongs are far from clear.

Your monitoring and other data has probably has given you an idea of what some local problems are -- nutrients from what sources? temperature? invasives? erosion? incision? heavy metals? "legacy" pollutants or new threats like pyrethroids? Find some smaller, specific ways to address one of more of those. Small successes, or even small failures from which you learn, will help you go on to larger things.

Susan Schwartz, president
Friends of Five Creeks

Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:08:50 -0500
From: Joan Martin <jmartin@HRWC.ORG>
Subject: RE: [volmonitor] Moving committed volunteers to the next level - local
river protection

I certainly enjoyed talking to you at our MiCorps conference, Pete. I
got very few responses to this list-serve email and am forwarding them
to you.

Any thoughts about the implications of the silent response?

Thanks,
-Joan

Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:43:54 -0700
From: Rich Schrader <rich@riversource.net>
Subject: Re: [volmonitor] Moving committed volunteers to the next level - local
river protection
Dear Pete, Joan, other fellow colleagues,

I am actively using effectiveness monitoring as a way to pull multiple stakeholders, including our state environment department (NMED), into community-based watershed protection. We are also directly linking our work to the No Child Left Inside movement (see outdoor.riversource.net) and the message is beginning to resonate as a high level frame (see the frameworksinstitute.org) that people can understand.

Also you might go to www.riversource.net and look at the data sharing project demo and the Data Sharing web page (pull down from the DATA tab on top). We will develop a project with Opensourcery and the Cimarron Watershed Alliance in the coming year for a watershed health database.

Rich Schrader
--
River Source
2300 W. Alameda, A6
Santa Fe, NM 87507
505-660-7928
www.riversource.net
ecowiser.org
outdoor.riversource.net

Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:12:03 -0600
From: Jackson.Peter@epamail.epa.gov
Subject: RE: [volmonitor] Moving committed volunteers to the next level - local
river protection

Joan, I am sorry that you didn't get a better response to your important
question - I hope it wasn't because I might've muddied the waters with
my follow-up question! I know one thing, it sure can't be the question
you asked. Data, once collected, should be put to good use - otherwise,
why collect it? Undoubtedly, local applications will call for different
tactics in different situations; these may include both educating
landowners and local officials to work toward a consensus on water
quality protection, to "legal" measures in some instances such as using
data to draw attention to potential Clean Water Act/water quality
standards violations. Some of the key ideas expressed in your initial
email - adding an "action component" to volunteer monitoring, and
volunteers serving as "advisors" to their local officials - seem like
very important strategies.

I took a quick look at past issues of The Volunteer Monitor to see
whether this issue had been directly addressed. It looks as though
topics somewhat related to your question have been addressed; for
example, community outreach (fall 97, issue 9/2), the Clean Water Act
(spring 01, issue 13/1), and success stories (summer 02, issue 14/2).
Also, some of the issues focusing on partnerships (e.g. winter 03,
winter 04, summer 04). But regardless, it seems clear to me that
getting volunteers to comment on how they have gone about promoting
cleaner water through action using their own data is a very important
question that could use some fresh discussion. There have to be alot of
great ideas out there as to what has been effective and also what has
not worked. We can all learn from both. Let's hope that some others
will jump in and we can re-start the discussion.

Thanks for raising this issue! Thanks also for passing along the
replies that you have received. And congratulations on all your
successes with the Huron River Watershed!

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