Santa Clara Basin Watershed Management Initiative
UPDATE — February 2004.
The Watershed Action Plan is on-line. Printed copies can be obtained from the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
The Watershed Action Plan continues to serve as useful and concise primer on the science and policy of watershed management in the Santa Clara Basin.
For more information on the Santa Clara Basin Watershed Management Initiative, visit www.scbwmi.org.
UPDATE — September 2003.
Dan attended the August 2003 Core Group meeting and assisted a group of stakeholders assigned to resolve last-minute comments on the draft Watershed Action Plan. The revised plan has final approval from the SCBWMI Core Group. This final draft can now be accessed at www.scbwmi.org.
During September, Dan assisted MIG, Inc. to obtain higher-resolution versions of the graphics in the draft Watershed Action Plan and permissions to use the graphics in the printed version. MIG is now preparing the Watershed Action Plan for printing and for publication on the web.
UPDATE — April 2003.
Dan presented the new draft of the Watershed Action Plan [623 KB] to the Santa Clara Basin Watershed Management Initiative Core Group on April 3, 2003.
UPDATE – March 25, 2003.
At the request of Watershed Action Plan Technical Advisory Group, minor revisions were made to the draft Watershed Action Plan and to the comments and response table. The new versions have been uploaded and the links updated.
UPDATE – March 17, 2003.
Dan has completed the draft Watershed Action Plan on schedule. The WAP is now available for download. The links are below.
The draft Watershed Action Plan is in a 4.8 MB Adobe Acrobat file. It includes the Executive Summary. Click here to view (or right-click to download and save). The Acrobat document can be navigated on-line using the Table of Contents or the Acrobat bookmarks. Alternatively, it is set up for two-sided printing (156 pp total).
The Executive Summary is a 770 KB Acrobat file that can be viewed by clicking here (or right-click to download and save).
A transmittal memo explaining changes since the earlier drafts is in a 114 KB Adobe Acrobat file. View by clicking here (or right-click to download and save).
Comments and responses are in a 24-page table, which can be viewed or downloaded as an Acrobat file by clicking here. There are two documents appended to the table in a single Acrobat file accessible by clicking here.
Background on the Watershed Action Plan
USEPA and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board started the Santa Clara Basin Watershed Management Initiative (SCBWMI) in 1996. They were soon joined by state and Federal resource agencies, all Basin municipalities, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, business interests, environmental advocates, and citizens groups.
In 2001, stakeholders brainstormed 112 one-to-two-page “Action Worksheets.” Dan Cloak was asked to analyze these in the context of existing policies and programs. The first step was to organize the actions into the following general subject areas: (1) urban land use planning, (2) imperviousness and drainage, (3) floodplain and riparian planning, (4) water use and recycling, (5) biodiversity, (6) stream functions, and (7) pollutants.
For each of these areas, Dan prepared a narrative stating the stakeholders’ vision, summarizing natural and social history, and identifying how stakeholder agencies and organizations can align, coordinate, and integrate their current policies and programs.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District supported the work to prepare initial drafts of all the planned chapters. The Cities of Palo Alto and Sunnyvale funded Dan Cloak’s interim assistance with presentations and a start on incorporating stakeholder comments. San Jose contracted with Dan Cloak Environmental Consulting to prepare the first complete draft.
Documents
Here are links to documents Dan Cloak prepared in connection with the Watershed Action Plan:
- “From Vision to Policy: A Plan to Get Savvy About Urban Watersheds”This 11-page paper summarizes the process by which the Action Plan was produced and some “lessons learned.”
- The “From Vision to Policy” paper was presented at the Ninth Biennial Conference of the Watershed Management Council, November 3-7, 2002. Presentation slides are here.
- The June 2002 submittal to the SCBWMI’s Core Group included draft Chapters 1-9, along with a memo and table explaining the organization of the Watershed Action Plan.
- Here are the slides from a presentation to the Core Group on June 6, 2002.
- A draft Chapter 10was submitted to the Core Group in August 2002.
- Here are the slides from an August 1, 2002 presentation to the Core Group.
Presentation slides were created in MS Powerpoint and can be viewed through your browser if you have Powerpoint or Powerpoint viewer. If you don’t, the viewer is available free.