Twenty watersheds from Maine to Hawaii received funding last summer under EPA's new Watershed Initiative - $15 million in all, for projects lasting from one to three years. Designed to boost local involvement in and commitment to water-quality efforts, the initiative awards money to a variety of groups, such as watershed organizations, tribes, local or regional government agencies, and coalitions made up of various combinations of these.

Dealing with local problems where they occur, with local leadership, makes a great deal of sense. With this initiative, EPA is recognizing the thousands of local watershed groups that already exist and lauding "citizen stewardship" as a way to supplement existing regulations. It has also acknowledged that "traditional regulatory tools alone are not going to completely achieve clean waters across the nation," and that, in particular, they can't easily address nonpoint-source pollution from agricultural and urban runoff.

Some questions remain, though, about how the initiative will actually be implemented, and the answers could make all the difference in whether it ultimately improves water quality or fragments NPS pollution control efforts. First, EPA has stated that the grants are one-time-only awards, thus allowing the money to be spread among as many watersheds as possible. Will the organizations managing the funds be able to continue in future years what they've begun under the initiative? Or will some of them, in order to qualify for a grant, primarily address tasks that can be completed in a short period of time, possibly at the expense of longer-term but more vital projects?

An important goal of the initiative is to encourage market-based strategies for dealing with NPS pollution. Some of the first 20 areas selected - Arkansas' Bayou Bartholomew Watershed, for example, and the Charles River - will examine pollutant trading and similar mechanisms. (The Bayou Bartholomew grant was awarded to Winrock International, a nonprofit group with environmental and economic programs worldwide; the Charles River grant to the nearly 40-year-old Charles River Watershed Association.) As long as these mechanisms are monitored and there is accountability to ensure they're helping meet the overall water-quality goals, they could be a tremendous benefit to water-quality efforts, offering far greater incentives for complying with regulations than the threat of punitive measures and encouraging creativity in finding ways to meet water-quality goals. Without strong oversight, however, they offer potential for wriggling out of compliance with existing NPS regs.

Sharing the outcomes - both successful and less than ideal - should be a key component of the program; while the grant recipients might know their own watersheds and local conditions better than anyone else, not all will have equal management expertise. Helping individual organizations avoid redundant or misguided efforts - the wheel being reinvented in isolation all over the country - should be one of EPA's priorities if the initiative continues.

When it announced the initiative in early 2002, EPA received 176 applications. The initiative's budget next year is expected to increase to $20 million; applications were accepted in June. If it continues to be funded and is managed carefully in the coming years, the Watershed Initiative will mark a significant change in how water quality is managed in the US, giving grassroots groups and even individual volunteers clout and resources they would not otherwise have.

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SW November/December 2003