“The Potomac Watershed Partnership is a large-scale restoration and stewardship project. Its mission is to create a collaborative effort among federal, state, and local partners to restore the health of the land and waters of the Potomac River Basin, thereby enhancing the quality of life and overall health of the Chesapeake Bay.”
–Mission Statement,
Potomac Watershed Partnership
The story of the Potomac Watershed Partnership highlights the critical role that a coordinator can play in structuring a collaborative partnership and guiding the interactions of its members. The PWP also serves as a model for other large-scale watershed partnerships in both developing a meaningful strategic plan and adopting measurable goals and objectives that can be tracked over time in order to ensure that the group is achieving progress.
The Potomac River is the second largest freshwater contributor to the Chesapeake Bay and drains a 14,670 square mile area including the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The river and its eight major tributaries cross five geological provinces through a diversity of eastern forest ecosystems, and runs 383 miles. Nearly five million residents impact the Potomac River. As described by The Potomac Conservancy, the Potomac River is:
“the wildest river running through a metropolitan area anywhere in the world. It supplies fresh drinking and household water for more than 80% of the 4 million residents of the Washington, D.C. area. Millions of canoeists, kayakers, fishermen, joggers, hunters, rowers, hikers, bikers, and birdwatchers take advantage of its unique and world-class recreational opportunities, and it is home to national wildlife treasures such as the great blue heron and the American bald eagle.”
Not surprisingly, a rapidly expanding urban population, combined with two centuries of intensive agricultural land uses, have presented challenges for the health of this watershed.
The Formation of the Potomac Watershed Partnership
Every partnership has to start sometime, at someone’s initiative. The Potomac Watershed Partnership grew from a Forest Service initiative to more effectively manage and restore nationally significant watersheds through community-based large-scale restoration projects. In 1999, the Forest Service realized that solutions to watershed issues would require working collaboratively across mixed ownerships within watersheds. Consequently, the agency solicited nominations for regional watersheds fulfilling certain criteria (e.g., nationally significant watersheds with multiple partners doing on-the-ground work) to receive agency support. From more than 60 proposals, the agency selected 15 large-scale watershed restoration projects, one of which was the Potomac River Watershed.
However, the story of the Potomac Watershed Partnership’s beginnings is not so simple. In response to the Forest Service’s call for proposals, four groups submitted independent proposals for work in different parts of, or on different issues within, the Potomac River watershed. These four groups were the USDA Forest Service Northeast Area, USDA Forest Service George Washington/Jefferson National Forest, Virginia Department of Forestry, and Ducks Unlimited. At the time, there was no comprehensive plan or coordinated effort for restoration in this important watershed, and no mechanism encouraging collaboration among such groups. Consequently, these groups had not consolidated their efforts in advance to submit a single proposal for the region. Recognizing the need for a more coordinated set of activities, a Forest Service official suggested that the four proposals be combined into one. Thus was born the Potomac Watershed Partnership.
Just because someone says it makes sense to work together in partnership does not mean that the process will be easy. The groups that joined together as the Potomac Watershed Partnership had never worked together previously, and from the beginning the group’s work was challenging and at times conflict-ridden. Alison McKechie, PWP Coordinator since early 2001, says of the group’s formation, “as you can imagine, it was not the most auspicious start for a partnership.” The partners were initially distrustful of the way that funding was distributed. Furthermore, they did not have a deep understanding of each others’ organizations and objectives and the type of work that each did. Not surprisingly, it took time to build a productive and informed working relationship among the newly formed partnership.
The Critical Role of the Partnership Coordinator
While “partnership” implies even involvement and interaction across a group of partners, it nonetheless is a tremendous help if there is someone at the helm, managing the process, serving as a point person, arranging logistics, managing conflict and, generally, just keeping the group on track. Partnerships are seldom self-managing; they usually need someone to keep people focused and engaged, and to keep the process on track and moving forward. One of the first big challenges for the nascent Potomac Watershed Partnership was deciding who should fill this critical role.
Every Forest Service large-scale community-based watershed restoration partnership is required to develop a standardized business plan. In 2000, the initial partners in the PWP developed their business plan together. Albert Todd, Watershed Program Leader in the Northern Area/State and Private Forestry region of the Forest Service, coordinated the group’s efforts for the first year. As other responsibilities and demands diluted the time he could contribute as coordinator, Todd proposed that the group hire its own coordinator to be housed in the Potomac Conservancy, a regional land and water conservation organization dedicated to permanent land protection in the Potomac River watershed.
Convincing other members of the group that an independent coordinator was a good idea was not easy. Ray Johnston, Forest Service Southern Region PWP member, was reluctant to house a coordinator outside of the Forest Service, the agency providing the majority of the financial support for the PWP’s projects. He remembers his discussion with Todd: “The Forest Service is putting a million dollars in, and the [Potomac] Conservancy is not in the partnership yet. I am concerned about this…I want to make sure that we’re fiscally correct, that we actually have some direction. If someone else takes this over, we have to really make sure that we have a good coordinating team.”
As Johnston explains, his fears were quickly allayed when McKechie became PWP Coordinator in February 2001. He now calls their Partnership’s coordinator “a ball of fire and breath of fresh air.” What enabled an initially skeptical Forest Service employee fearful of losing control of sound funding and decision-making authority to declare their non-Forest Service coordinator “a blessing”? The answer to this question lies in the approach taken by McKechie, one that maintained individual partner’s roles in decision-making. According to Johnston, McKechie was “an enabler and a person that brought us together.” He explains that she brought 1) a background dealing with large groups of people with different foci; 2) a lot of credibility with other groups because she had worked in the environmental and conservation community; and, 3) her own personal character filled with energy, fresh thoughts, and a willingness to look for opportunities and pursue them.
Placement of the PWP Coordinator within the Potomac Conservancy instead of a federal agency enabled more flexibility and opportunities to meet individual partner’s needs. The Forest Service has a cooperative agreement with the Potomac Conservancy to provide the PWP Coordinator services. McKechie explains, “I am able to leverage more dollars and provide more services than I would be able to if I were working for the State or Feds.” As just one example, McKechie has been able to provide the seemingly simple service of cell phones to the state agency field staff in Maryland, a service that their agency is not able to afford.
Also important to the sustainability of the PWP is the Coordinator’s role as the central data clearinghouse. The group recognizes the value of graphic images, and have worked to develop a means for all the partners to contribute to a single, centrally-housed database for creating maps. As one participant noted, “You can verbally or narratively describe things to people, but it makes such a difference when you can show people on a map that there’s an application of specific projects in a certain area. Then people start to see patterns. We can show how we’ve connected fragmented forest areas.”
Finding a Way to Work Together as a Team
A partnership implies people working together, not independently. Sometimes this behavior is easy when organizations or individuals have worked together before; sometimes it requires overcoming past tensions and distrust. For the PWP, two key factors seemed to help the group make progress: first, the astute application of conflict management strategies by McKechie that helped ease group dynamics; and, second, the joint development of a strategic plan which provided both a shared focus and an opportunity to simply begin working together.
Conflict Management Strategies: The PWP Coordinator did a lot of independent research about conflict resolution techniques. She used what she called a “SPOT Analysis” process that focused the group on its “strengths, problems, opportunities, and threats.” She believes that this refocusing of the group’s attention enabled them to begin thinking about problems as opportunities. Also, this process provided a forum for the group to air their differences in a constructive way that fostered understanding.
When McKechie was first hired as PWP Coordinator, the group’s business plan had been completed but no individual partnership projects were yet underway. Tension in the group abounded. Not only were the Forest Service partners concerned about losing their fiscal decision-making authority, but so was the Potomac Conservancy, the newest partner to join the PWP. The business plan designated priority projects to receive support from the annual $1.2 million that the Forest Service provided for Partnership activities. New partners were skeptical of this process. McKechie explains the perception of how money was distributed: “the allocation of funds was determined primarily by the USFS representative without full discussion by the Partners. Unfortunately, [while not intended] the overall result was a lot of bad feeling and misunderstandings that could have been avoided by utilizing some process that allowed full transparency. Ultimately, it became clear that the business plan was a good start but didn’t fit with where the partnership was going.”
Recognizing this undercurrent tension in the group, the Coordinator worked with the Partnership to devise more effective and productive means for the partners to communicate with one another. For McKechie, “the business plan was great to get us started—it gave me some direction in terms of people’s understanding of the partnership.” And yet, new members had trouble identifying their niches within the business plan. The plan also did not address the communication and accountability issues that resulted from the way in which the partnership was formed.
One key issue for the group involved language barriers. As McKechie explained, “the biggest issue was that they were using the same words, but they were meaning different things to each person…in February 2002…we actually sat down and talked about what each organization needed as a deliverable from the partnership to show that the time they were spending in the partnership was constructive and efficient and furthered the cause of their own individual organization. Then we also sat down and talked about the language we were using.” This was a critical turning point for the group. They discovered their accountabilities were different. For example, the Potomac Conservancy has to justify any time not spent fundraising to its Board of Directors, but Ducks Unlimited measures its success in mileage and acres buffered, and so time spent at meetings is time lost getting miles and acres.
The Strategic Plan: In order to help the partnership become more productive, McKechie led the group through a strategic planning process that lasted eight months. She began to hold face-to-face Steering Committee meetings every three months and Steering Committee conference calls the first Monday of every month. McKechie describes the intensity of the process: “There were some meetings where people were so angry that they literally had to leave the table. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. People were really vested in this project, and the fact that they got so emotional speaks to that.” Working through the conflict was essential to the Partnership’s strength today. McKechie comments, “having to work through all that conflict was a really positive thing. I think they are incredibly strong now as a result of it. If I were to leave now, the partnership wouldn’t fall apart. Whereas if I were to have left six months ago, that might not have been the case.” Several partners confirmed McKechie’s intuition, telling her that in the early stages of the process they would have had a difficult time sticking with what was a trying process if she were to have left.
The strategic planning process played a critical role in generating a collective understanding of each partner’s reasons for being in the Partnership and enabled individuals in the group to overcome their reservations about having a Coordinator housed outside of the Forest Service.
The ease and comfort with which the PWP now approaches its budgeting process is one striking example of the success of the trust-building process and resulting strategic plan. While it was once a major point of contention and source of distrust in the group, the budgeting process became transparent for the first time in 2003. The Coordinator asked each PWP member to propose projects and funding requirements. The proposals were collectively $700K over-budget. McKechie circulated these proposals to everyone in the Partnership and asked each Partner to critique the budgets, proposing necessary cuts to their own and others. During the group’s face-to-face meeting, McKechie had compiled all of the information and asked the group, “what are the core projects that must be funded?” She explains, “It was key to approach this as a positive process—instead of cutting the budget, we built the budget.” Through this process, the PWP was able to ensure that all critical projects were funded, and they had $200K to spare for funding additional projects. The Coordinator remarked, “this had such incredible potential to be destructive, and instead, the partners were offering money up and volunteering cuts to their own budgets!” Ray Johnston echoes that this was a turning point for him in the group: “The Steering team became a viable body. For me, we actually make decisions at the Steering Committee meetings. We look at how the money is allocated, and we help prioritize as a group.”
At the end of the eight-month strategic planning sessions, the group had identified the following six Partnership Goals for the Potomac Watershed Partnership in its Final 2002 Strategic Plan:
(1) Increase and Spread of Knowledge through Assessment, Monitoring, and Education
[Increase our knowledge and understanding of the Potomac River Watershed, its problems, and the value of our restoration and stewardship actions and communicate this information to and engage the Public.]
(2) Accelerate Riparian and Wetland Restoration
[Restore riparian forests, wetlands, and watersheds to improve water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, drinking water supply, and river-based recreation.]
(3) Promote Land Protection and Stewardship
[Enhance conservation through land protection and resource management to reduce or mitigate the loss and fragmentation of forest habitats and working forests due to urban sprawl.]
(4) Enhance Forest Stewardship and Reduce Wildfire Risk
[Increase the health of critical watersheds through forest stewardship and protect communities from the threat of wildfire.]
(5) Create more Livable Communities
[Enhance the quality of life for communities and the health of urban watersheds through expansion of green infrastructure.]
(6) Sustain and Expand Partnerships
[Leverage skills and resources of the Partners to expand and sustain a network of conservation partners and partnership activities in the Potomac Watershed.]
Guidelines for decision-making: To develop these goals, the group stepped through an effective three-tiered process that included analysis of and agreement upon 1) core components of the PWP’s work which would prioritize the allocation of resources, which became the group’s goals 2) specific objectives falling under each of these goals, and 3) tactics to complete these objectives, and measures of accomplishment and environmental change to evaluate whether the tactics, objectives, and goals are being accomplished. For example, one goal is to develop systems “to monitor the health of the watershed and the extent to which restoration activities are working.” Specific objectives under this goal include:
o increasing monitoring of the watershed qualities,
o development of an online system to gather and share information and facilitate decision-making, and
o increasing the number of water-quality monitoring sites.
The partners use the strategic plan for tracking purposes, and report updates to the PWP Coordinator on their progress two times a year. All field staff also have copies of the strategic plan and use it as guidance for developing and implementing projects.
A Focus on Tracking Progress: As part of its Strategic Plan, the Partnership explicitly focuses on setting objectives and selecting indicators to measure progress towards achieving these objectives. Many collaborative groups set goals and objectives, but fewer give thought to how they will determine if they are achieving desired results through their collective efforts. In this respect, the Potomac Watershed Partnership is unique. The Coordinator was able to work with the group on these important objective-setting and evaluation elements from the Partnership’s infancy because the group had not started significant on-the-ground activities when she came on board.
McKechie explains the group’s rationale for and natural tendency towards including measures of success as an element of the Partnership’s work: “We started to say, ‘how do we break this down into our goals and objectives?’ And you know, we’ve all been involved in projects that are touchy-feely, but how do we actually show that we’ve made measurable environmental change that justifies the cost of investment in this project? All of the Steering Committee members are very much bottom-line people who need to see those numbers.” And so, for the Potomac Watershed Partnership, the impetus for trying to systematically measure progress towards objectives is partially rooted in the personalities and experiences of the group members. Funding pressures are certainly another reason for the group’s focus on tracking its progress. The PWP’s funding by the National Forest Service programs is expected to decline, and being able to show progress to other potential funding sources will be important for the group’s fiscal stability.
The Partnership determined its measures of progress largely through a brainstorming process. These measures are divided into “measures of accomplishment,” which are measurements of actions to achieve each objective, and “measures of environmental change,” which are measurements of the desired outcome of these actions. For example, the Partnership’s second goal is to accelerate riparian and wetland restoration. One of its objectives to achieve this goal is to restore 500 miles of riparian forest buffers in the Potomac Watershed by 2004. The measure of accomplishment for this objective is the number of miles and acres of riparian forest buffers established. The measure of environmental change for this objective is improved water quality and habitat in the stream and near-stream environment, as indicated by the extent and connectivity of forest habitat; water temperature; nitrogen, phosphorus, and long-term sediment levels; and the occurrence of pollution-sensitive species in the benthic macroinvertebrate community.
Similarly, the Partnership’s sixth goal is to sustain and expand a network of partners in the Potomac watershed. One of the objectives to achieve this goal is to create more inclusive partnerships and support local community and regional groups. Measures of accomplishment for this goal include the number of organizations involved in the PWP’s programs and projects and the diversity of attendees at its workshops. The measure of environmental change is the geo-spatial representation of the partners.
Engaging and Building the Capacity of Volunteers PWP members recognized that they needed to engage volunteer efforts because the partnership alone could not undertake what was needed to restore the Potomac River watershed. Consequently, one of the group’s goals is “to encourage local residents, community members and organizations to participate in watershed monitoring programs. Potential projects include monitoring forest and riparian vegetation, wildlife populations, and the chemical, biological, and physical properties of stream and rivers (water quality). The long-term goal of our monitoring program is to gather basic information on the biological and physical components of local watershed ecosystems and to share that information with community members, schools, local agencies, other organizations and decision makers.”
The PWP is striking a balance between reaching out to solicit new partners and reaching out to provide capacity-building resources, programs, and technical resources to smaller organizations in the watershed. Instead of systematically broadening the partnership’s membership, the PWP is primarily conducting local capacity-building efforts. The Partnership provides specialized training, reference documents and protocols, and other services to build the capacity of groups and individuals in the watershed to contribute to its restoration. For example, the PWP has catalyzed an ongoing project called the Seed Growout Stations Program being conducted by Community Commons, a community conservation organization in the Monocacy watershed in Maryland. Community Commons has embraced the PWP’s Growing Native program and has created an educational program with two high schools and three middle schools to grow trees that will eventually be used for stream bank restoration projects. Each school learns about and designs micro-nurseries where the trees will be raised. Students and teachers participate in Growing Native’s native seed collection project, and then plant their seeds in the school’s nurseries. Trees and shrubs being grown include black walnut, northern red oak, serviceberry, spicebush, bitternut hickory, green ash, hackberry, silky dogwood, and American hornbeam. Community Commons has received many tangential benefits from this effort including increased press coverage, a growing volunteer base, and additional funding. PWP arranged with state nurseries to purchase some of the acorns and seeds collected from the school groups, and so Community Commons is receiving cash for the work.
This site was developed by the Ecosystem Management Initiative through a partnership with the US Forest Service and the US Department of Interior. Read more.
