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Thinking About Strategies


The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation lists ways "that you can help your watershed." These include ways such as:

  1. Learn the name of your watershed (your "address")
  2. Adopt a stream
  3. Landscape your home with conservation in mind
  4. Fertilize grass in the fall
  5. Dispose properly of pet waste
  6. Keep oil out of storm drains
  7. Maintain properly septic systems
  8. Get involved in local politics and organizations

I had the feeling after reading that list that if I had done all or most of those things (and I do), watersheds, not even my watershed, would be much better. I felt patronized. I did not even see the hint of a "tributary approach" to massive watershed issues.

I searched for an analogy. All analogies break down, but one seemed useful. I saw myself as a mere soldier. A platoon of expert soldiers, perfectly trained, cannot win a war. There must be superior leaders, and even these cannot prevent losses. There must be generals who plan and conduct thoughtful, often crafty, often devious means to outwit an enemy and win wars. Even these are not enough, for in some years there are political and citizen leaders, orators, statesmen, crafters of powerful documents, that provide national and international leadership...even avoiding wars.

By analogy, I think the strategic work and follow up action needed for the watersheds of Virginia is of the order and magnitude of political force and international generalship. We cannot educate or communicate ourselves out of the difficulties and challenges we now face. We cannot call upon personal responsibility and personal action by every citizen. We probably need field leaders but more important, given the crisis conditions and the rates of change now occurring on the land and in cities, we now need profoundly crafted strategies that prompt and cause change of a very great order of magnitude. These are needed to counter the downward spiral of watershed and river condition and function degradation.

It has not reached the local or national consciousness that we are now 20% rural, 80% urban. That major reversal has happened rapidly, in less that 50 years, hardly time to notice, certainly not adjust. Cities expand, farmlands are automated. Water is polluted... and it runs off...into drinking waters and other special places. We withdraw more water for our city habits than recharges our aquifers. Wetland recharge areas are under attack; they always loose. We are more numerous and we use more water and we demand higher quality water... but few of us know about water and how perilous is our condition. We do not know where the karst waters flow, and do not seem to care. Flood peaks increase; predictability decreases. Nationally, we are essential-phosphate-fertilizer short and do not know where it comes from... or goes. We debate climatic warming, betting that evaporation will not increase, plants not dry up, soils will become unprotected, water velocities will not increase, or that scouring power will remain as we knew it when we were children. We withdraw excessive amounts of groundwater. Saltwater intrudes into the depleted pressure zones of ground water at the coast. Polluted waters from waste dumps dotting the land ooze into home well waters (still used by 15% of citizens). Floods still scour people and possessions from unmanaged mountain valleys. The perils of drought of Biblical proportion still seem surprising.

I was once told of wartime youth being trained to drive a truck full of earth and rocks to a crossroad in the path of advancing troops if their village was attacked. Their task was to select the crossroad where the greatest delays would occur for the enemy. I think we are now similarly compelled to think of where we might have the most influence for the least investment and in the least time.

We need profound watershed strategies. Those of The New River Watershed Roundtable are strong but more is needed. Several are needed, just for a fail-safe condition. We have heard the worries and even threats too long. They seem false, at least ill advised, certainly politically incorrect in today's climate. Yet those are the conditions, as sure as knowledge that gravity affects water and that temperature affects evaporation. That's just the way it is and not denying it has to be part of the solution, perhaps a solution system. We need to recruit some very bright people. Some of these may be water and watershed experts ... but they have been "beat-up" and probably can no longer perform. They are discouraged by past public reactions, trapped by their agency policies or research goals, and perceived responsibilities. Others in denial will be hard to avoid.

I'm probably in error but I am not being modest, only realistic. In attempting to clarify and give possible hints at what I am thinking (and can imagine very bright leaders supplying it) seems to me that there must be:

  1. Laws and regulations with their new, unrelenting enforcement
  2. Creative legislation preventing inter-basin transfer of water
  3. Strong incentives for using less water and creating conditions that require less water
  4. Fossil energy costs linked directly to water use
  5. Water conservation devices in building codes
  6. Work crews for youths and adults to create the stream stair-step form, recreating the stream profiles of yore
  7. Involvement with a system of activities such as suggested in Ranging 'Round the New.
  8. Regulated crop and lawn fertilization and herbiciding (we have to reduce it, then keep what amount we use on the land surface ... not try to remove it later from vast volumes of river water)
  9. Mine the waste disposal sites to remove future hazards to groundwater
  10. Financial incentives for having, holding, and protecting stream water quality and quantities
  11. System-engineered terrain where mass earth moving occurs for a desired surface
  12. A game-theoretic strategy for flood plains, discouraging living within them, building risk-taking into personal decisions to live in them, reducing (damping) peakflows, and preventing pollution conditions that result from flooding.
  13. Taxes proportionate for people who use crops with high water demand
  14. Taxes or charges by volumes of high-quality water that are used.
  15. All proposers of a new public water supply hook-up subject to the results of to a major computer model that estimate the impact of the proposed use throughout the system and for at least the next 50 years (and charges for the hook-up based on the results.).

In "Integrated Environmental Management," was a chapter authored by Todd Crawford, John Cairns, and Hal Salwasser. In there, they described a Corps conference in 1992 in Atlanta where a ranked list of issues affecting the Savannah River were developed by 48 folks from various agencies. I'll bet the list developed for the New River and other local watersheds will be similar. The list was: (1) Assuring that adequate quantities of water of acceptable quality are available to meet drinking water needs; providing water that is of adequate quality to serve a diversity of ecological, recreational, domestic, and industrial needs.
(2) Optimizing water level management to meet all competing needs. This issue includes achieving agreement for balancing resource uses.
(3) Determining adequate minimum flows.
(4) Developing a comprehensive lake management plan based on negotiated resource allocations.
(5) Identifying who controls basin resources.
(6) Protecting quality fish and wildlife habitat and maintaining habitat diversity.
(7) Ensuring continued commitment to quality stewardship of basin resources.
(8) Reducing the negative impacts of economic development in the basin.
They suggested that the above activities are significant steps toward a holistic management of the River Basin. There is a consoling thought that we are not alone. There is a challenging thought that our creative solutions may be general enough to be used effectively by others. (Some call that part of a systems approach.)

It seems that there is need for presentations, documents, and action following thoughts about:

Following the military analogy suggested above, we have to stop polishing boots while the fort is being surrounded by the enemy. The current watershed analogy to that imagined military situation is the states' watershed agency's appeal to "buy a Chesapeake Bay car license plate!" We can do better. We need to! Soon!

I welcome suggestions for improvements.

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Last revision June 2, 2004.