Community Engagement and Planning for Watershed Resilience

For ten years, partners in the Grand River/Grand Rapids region have worked together to restore the river and engage the community in the watershed. Read on to find out more about the Grand River, Grand Rapids, and the Urban Waters Federal Partnership.

In 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) piloted the  Urban Waters Federal Partnership  (UWFP) Program around the United States. The Grand River/Grand Rapids area became one of the UWFP locations in 2013.

The focus of  Grand River/Grand Rapids UWFP  has been on the restoration of the rapids in the Grand River as it flows through downtown Grand Rapids. The Partnership location also seeks to accelerate and coordinate projects that are critical to improving water quality and public health, restoring forest resources, and fostering community stewardship in the urban portion of the watershed.

Seeing a need to add a climate change dimension to the 2011  Lower Grand River Watershed Management Plan , the Lower Grand Organization of Watersheds (LGROW) began the development of  The Lower Grand River Watershed Resilience Plan . The resilience plan fills the need for a holistic, watershed-based approach to developing climate change resilience.

Using the ERB toolkit for community engagement was an asset for the Grand Rapids UWFP and the goals to include community voices in equitable watershed planning. Beyond the Grand Rapids region, lessons were learned to make watershed resilience actions more equitable and transferable to a broader audience. 

1. Gather community perspectives when and where community members may be, rather than waiting for community members to bring their issues to authorities or service institutions.  
2. Prioritize community needs including safe and affordable housing, living wage jobs, educational and extra-curricular opportunities for youth, connection to basic resources, community safety, and access to clean and trusted drinking water through watershed planning and other actions. Engage social service organizations and agencies to determine opportunities for connecting shared goals among the above needs. 
3. Utilize trusted messengers: service organizations, faith leaders, firefighters, teachers.  
4. Use different communication channels to reach different communities.  
5. Make communication two-way to understand what assets, needs, and wants exist in communities.  
6. Offer incentives (such as honorariums, travel stipends, childcare, etc.) that may help overcome accessibility issues and barriers to action.   
7. Audit all resource allocations – grant programs, services, etc. – to determine current beneficiaries. Compare these beneficiaries using tools like the  MiEJScreen  (an interactive mapping tool that identifies Michigan communities that may be disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards) and reorient resources to target individuals and communities with greater needs.  
8. Intentionally choose historically underserved communities as priority beneficiaries. This may include examination of municipal and institutional programming to determine resource allocation in and for historically underserved communities.  
9. Think larger by considering historical factors (such as institutional racism) and existing conditions for disproportionate impacts on underserved communities, as well as utilizing longer-term timelines to assess the equitability of project outcomes.  
10. Consider community assets when engaging with underserved communities. Build actions upon the human, social, and physical capital that exists within local communities.  

The Grand River/Grand Rapids UWFP will integrate these recommendations into the work plan to share with partners and guide our next steps of the ongoing work. This work plan will help the subwatershed groups implement their action plans, create more resilience in their watershed, and connect and engage with the Partnership.