In the last issue of The Networker, I wrote an article on my experience with the Four Corners national watershed dialogue group. Since I was not involved until June 1996, I was not clear on the details of its origins and omitted some important background information that may also be helpful to anyone else seeking to put together a national or regional dialogue. The following is a clarification of how the effort began, as described by Peter Lavigne, an originator of the Four Corners concept who now works as Director of the Watershed Management Professional Program at Portland State University and as an environmental consultant.
In 1994, the Henry P. Kendall Foundation of Boston initiated a process to examine and analyze the best of what was happening in watershed approaches to ecosystem protection and management in North America. That process led to a joint effort with Peter Lavigne and his River Leadership Program at River Network to design and organize a national Watershed Innovators Workshop, held at Swift River in Massachusetts in June 1995. A two day session was conducted with 33 participants from throughout the U.S. and Canada in a series of facilitated case studies and strategy discussions facilitated by Chuck Fox (now Assistant Administrator of EPA) and Kevin Coyle (now President of the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation) on the current status and future prospects of watershed approaches. Massachusetts co-hosted and played a large role in the workshop because of a general sense that the concentration of citizen led watershed protection organizations and Massachusetts' environmental agencies' efforts to reorganize around watershed boundaries led the nation in watershed protection and management.
The workshop's analysis of the Massachusetts' case study dramatically reshaped the direction and goals of the various watershed protection efforts in Massachusetts. Probing questions and the cumulative experience of the various experts found gaps in the Massachusetts presentation and a basic inability to understandably explain what they were doing. The workshop discussion forced them to clarify their goals, simplify their language, and focus and jump-start the efforts at agency reorganization and redirection. Other benefits of the 1995 workshop included forming a loose network of key innovators throughout the continent who became aware that others were struggling, succeeding, and sometimes failing with many common issues.
As a follow-up to the Watershed Innovators Workshop, participants suggested that the dialogue continue in order to improve the ability of states, tribes, federal agencies, nongovernmental organizations and private business to carry out watershed protection, restoration, and management. Pete Lavigne and Ted Smith (of the Henry P. Kendall Foundation) had conversations with Professor Steve Born (University of Wisconsin), the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (Secretary Trudy Coxe), and other participants in the workshop about how best to accomplish this dialogue.
Out of this effort came the idea to concentrate on individuals in four somewhat arbitrarily selected states representing some of the leading approaches to watershed managementin the U.S.: Massachusetts, Florida, California, and Washington. Five 'delegates' from each state representing organizations, state agencies, and business were invited to help design a two year program focusing specifically on state, tribal, and nongovernmental innovations in watershed management. These 20 people convened together at the Watershed ë96 National Conference in Baltimore, Maryland in June 1996 and overwhelmingly agreed that the Kendall Foundation should go forward with the Four Corners Dialogue.
Now back to the rest of the story...
Pete Lavigne reached at (503) 236-4496, e-mail at watershed@igc.org. or through Portland State's Watershed Management Program's web page at: www.upa.pdx.edu/PA/ELI/Watershed/index.html Proceedings of the Watershed Innovators Workshop and other materials related to the 4 Corners process are available from River Network on their website at www.rivernetwork.org-
