Land and Watershed Management - Practices of Irrigation and On-farm Water Management - page 229

6.6.3 Watershed Planning and Management
Watershed planning and management comprise an approach to protect water quality
and quantity that focuses on a whole watershed. This is a departure from the tradi-
tional approach of managing individual wastewater discharges, and is necessary due
to the nature of polluted runoff, which in most watersheds is the biggest contribu-
tor to water pollution. Polluted runoff is caused by a variety of land use activities,
including development, transportation, agriculture and forestry, and may originate
anywhere in the watershed. Due to its diffuse nature, polluted runoff cannot be
effectively managed through regulatory programs alone.
Watershed planning and management involve a number of activities: targeting
priority problems in a watershed, promoting a high level of involvement by inter-
ested and affected parties, developing solutions to problems through the use of
the expertise and authority of multiple agencies and organizations, and measuring
success through monitoring and other data gathering. Watershed management activ-
ities may take place at the state, river basin, or individual watershed level. Many
issues are best addressed at the individual watershed level. For example, identify-
ing sources of pollution that are carried by storm water to a lake is best carried out
by people working within that lake watershed. Other issues are more appropriate
at the basin level, such as determining appropriate discharge limits for wastewater
licenses within the basin. Still others may best be operated at the state level, such as
the operation of a statewide permit program.
Of course any planning process would benefit from the inclusion of both water-
shed and social data. Land use planners are commonly faced with a challenging mix
of resource management, residential, habitat and aesthetic values, and issues.
A process for collecting and combining available watershed and social data with
the goal of improving land use decision making in rural regions is necessary. The
process should integrate watershed assessment, public participation, and land use
planning concepts in an effort to provide tools to maintain rural community quality
of life while conserving the water, the land, and other resource values. The strategy
should include characteristics of a community plan, a watershed plan, and a commu-
nity “visioning” document. It should be combined directly with a land use planning
process.
Watershed management plans generally include the following elements:
(i) Definition of the area of concern, the purpose of the plan, and who was involved
in developing the plan.
(ii) Description of the physical, ecological, and social characteristics of the
watershed and the communities within its boundaries.
(iii) Description of the problems that affect watershed functions.
(iv) Identification of responsible parties and of planned activities for addressing
identified problems and responsible parties.
(v) Explanation of how progress will be measured once implementation of a plan
begins.
(vi) Evaluation of the success.