Measuring the Soft Stuff — Evaluating Public Involvement in an Urban Watershed Restoration

Abstract

Urban watershed restoration relies on the success of a wide array of stakeholder efforts. Some stakeholder efforts are easy to measure -a municipality that builds a storm water retention basin can monitor flows and water quality to determine the effectiveness of the basin. Other stakeholder efforts, such as public involvement, are more difficult to measure. This paper presents a case study for measuring and evaluating the effectiveness of a public involvement and education strategy for the Rouge River Watershed in metropolitan Detroit. It focuses on the public opinion telephone survey results from 1999. This paper compares the 1999 survey responses to those obtained from a similar baseline watershed-wide survey conducted in 1993 and an intensive mail survey also conducted in 1999 in a smaller area of the watershed.In 1993, the Rouge River National Wet Weather Demonstration Project (Rouge Project) developed a strategy for public involvement. The strategy was based on a series of interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders, and a telephone survey of 400 individuals representing households in four distinct geographic units within portions of three southeast Michigan counties that comprise the watershed. The Rouge Project, supported by funding from the USEPA and local matching funds, used this strategy to guide its public information and stakeholder involvement activities from 1993 through 1999. In 1999, a new telephone public opinion survey was conducted to evaluate the success of the strategy and to guide further public involvement and education activities associated with implementation of Michigan's new voluntary, watershed based, general storm water permit.The initial focus groups, interviews and telephone public opinion survey conducted as part of the Rouge Project in 1993 sought to establish a number of parameters important to development of an effective public education and stakeholder involvement strategy for the project. Stakeholders were asked questions to determine their perceptions of water quality in the river and the relative importance of environmental quality versus other public issues (i.e., education, crime, unemployment, and health care). Questions were asked about the relative priority of a series of environmental issues (i.e., air pollution, water quality, hazardous waste disposal, and clean up of toxic waste sites). Also, a series of questions was asked to determine the respondent's knowledge of the Rouge River, recreational uses, and quality of life issues.Questions were also asked in the original surveys, focus groups and interviews to determine the stakeholders' willingness to change personal behavior in order to improve water quality, and their willingness to spend public funds to protect and restore the river. Finally, a series of questions were asked to determine how respondents obtained information about the environment (e.g., newspapers, television, friends, church, environmental organizations, etc.) and which organizations or entities they trusted most when it came to communicatin...

Meeting the Phase 2 Storm Water Regulations Using a Watershed-Based Approach: A Practical Example

“…The MDEQ Rouge River Remedial Action Plan (RAP) requirements, developed to address pollution problems in this designated Great Lakes Area of Concern, was initially prepared in 1989was updated in 1995(MDEQ, 1998. Two major public opinion surveys, conducted by the Rouge Project in 1993 and repeated in 1999, provided the SWAGs with a measure of public knowledge about the river, major concerns, and priorities (Powell, 2000). In addition, community and agency participants and citizen advisors brought personal knowledge of river conditions to the SWAGs.…”