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4 Comments
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Re: Promoting Community Watershed Awareness
2011-03-02 09:21:04 UTC
Hi Marc -
We've been debating that same question here in Minnesota. There are many people who believe it is necessary for people to understand the concept of a watershed and to know which watershed they live in, in order to become invested in protecting their waters. However, we have also heard from many media and marketing consultants - Dick Brooks is one - who are telling us that it is more important for us to teach people the right behaviors. We have had a lot of success in the past few years getting people to build raingardens, and most of the people are building them primarily because they want a pretty garden in their yard and they know that it somehow helps to keep water clean. (www.BlueThumb.org if you want more info on that). When I have people's attention for a presentation or workshop, I spend ten minutes or so familiarizing them with their watershed and talking about where the water goes and the local streams, lakes and rivers they connect to. When I only have a few minutes of people's time, such as at a table at an event, I focus directly on what I want people to do (ie. plant trees, pull buckthorn, build a raingarden) and what resources are available to help them do it. When there is even less time - perhaps seconds that a person glances at a sign while walking past a bus stop - it is even more important to quickly tell them exactly what they should do. This is why the storm sewer stencils usually say something like "dump no waste, drains to lake." If you are going to print a message further from the actual creek or river, know that people might not really even care about the resource, because they don't see it every day or use it in any way, so they will not likely be motivated to visit a website to learn more about protecting the creek they aren't lucky enough to live by. My recommendation would be to decide on one or two key behaviors you want people to do and to make that your message. If they are behaviors that also benefit the people, they will be that much more likely to succeed. Examples: "Pick up your trash to keep our bus stop looking nice and keep the water clean too." "plant a tree to reduce your energy bills and help keep local lakes clean."
Angie Hong
Water Resource Educator
Washington Conservation District
United States -
Re: Planting Vegetated Buffers to Improve Water Quality.
2010-06-11 10:05:55 UTC
Minnesota has been very successful with a 3-year old program called Blue Thumb -Planting for Clean Water, which encourages people to use native plants, raingardens and shoreline plantings to protect lakes and streams. www.BlueThumb.org has info on the whole program, while www.bluethumb.org/shorelines is specifically about buffer plantings and has 4 sample shoreline designs. We have 60 public and private partners in the region and have helped people to install more than 1000 raingardens, a few hundred shoreline projects and countless native gardens and plantings.
Angie Hong
Water Resource Educator
Washington Conservation District
United States -
Re: Success Stories for New Book: McKenzie-Mohr, Lee, Schultz, Kotler
2010-01-20 09:49:55 UTC
Nancy -
We have had much sucess in Minnesota with a program called Blue Thumb - Planting for Clean Water (www.BlueThumb.org), which helps residents to plant native gardens, raingardens and shoreline plantings to reduce stormwater runoff and achieve other environmental benefits. The program has been going for about 3 years now and is a collaborative effort of 50-60 local government agencies, cities, nonprofits and private landscping companies. Collectively, we have completed an array of activites, including conducting focus group sessions, developing attractive and convincing materials and website, and integrating outreach with financial and technical assistance programs. As a result, there have been hundreds of new projects installed on private property in the past 3 years.
Give me a call or email and I can get you more information. [email protected] 651-275-1136 x.35
Angie Hong
Water Resource Educator
Washington Conservation District
United States -
Re: Encouraging People to use Native Plants in their Gardens
2009-06-05 11:04:31 UTC
www.BlueThumb.org - A Minnesota based program to encourage homeowners to plant native gardens, raingardens and shoreline plantings to help improve water quality.
The program is about 3 years old now and growing in leaps and bounds. There are 50+ partners, including private nurseries, government agencies, non-profits and community groups. We've planted hundreds of native gardens, raingardens and shoreline plantings in the past three years due to this successful outreach program. The website has almost all of the program info.
Angie Hong
Water Resource Educator
Washington Conservation District
United States
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