Conasauga River Alliance

Conasauga River Alliance Elizabeth Hamilton & Julia M. Wondolleck Ecosystem Management Initiative School of Natural Resources and Environment The University of Michigan 430 E. University Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1115 www.snre.umich.edu/emi/cases/conasauga Copyright © 2003 by the Ecosystem Management Initiative All Rights Reserved. This paper may not be copied, reproduced, or translated without permission in writing from the authors. 1 Introduction The 90-mile Conasauga River begins in the Chattahoochee National Forest high in the Blue Ridge Mountains in northwest Georgia and flows north into Tennessee, then west, and finally south into Georgia. In Georgia, it becomes part of the larger Coosa Basin System that continues to Mobile Bay. The Conasauga River watershed is a 500,000-acre landscape that is home to 125,000 humans, and provides habitat for approximately 90 species of fish and 25 species of freshwater mussels (many of them threatened or endangered). Since the 1970s, the number of mussel species found in the river has dropped from 40 to 28. The river is also a source of water for agriculture, local communities, and a carpet-dying industry that creates 80% of the nation’s and 45% of the world’s carpets. Committed citizens and representatives from nearly 40 state and federal agencies, nonprofit conservation and research organizations, businesses, and universities have joined forces to protect the invaluable natural, cultural, economic, and recreational resources of the Conasauga River. Loosely assembled under the umbrella of the Conasauga River Alliance, the diverse partners carry out a multitude of independent and often collaborative activities in pursuit of the Alliance’s vision “to maintain a clean and beautiful Conasauga River – forever.” In 1999, the Forest Service chose the Conasauga River watershed as one of 15 priority large watersheds. Like the Potomac Watershed Partnership,1 the Conasauga River Alliance is an initiative targeted at protecting one of the Forest Service-designated nationally significant watersheds.2 But the Alliance did not begin as a Forest Service-initiated group and, in fact, functioned for several years without the Forest Service as a partner. The story of the Conasauga River Alliance highlights the logic and the challenges associated with large-scale watershed collaboration. Two major observations weave together the lessons of this partnership. First, this partnership highlights the challenges inherent in uniting multiple organizations with multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives under a common umbrella focused on a shared set of activities. The partners of the Conasauga River Alliance sometimes struggle to simultaneously fulfill their individual organizational goals and those of the Alliance. Second, the Conasauga River Alliance experience also 1 See case study for Potomac Watershed Partnership at: http://www.snre.umich.edu/emi/cases/home.htm. 2 In 1999, the Forest Service realized that solutions to watershed issues would require working collaboratively across mixed ownerships within watersheds. Consequently, the Forest Service solicited nominations for regional watersheds fulfilling certain criteria (e.g., nationally significant watersheds with multiple partners doing on-the-ground work), and from more than 60 proposals, selected 15 large-scale watershed restoration projects, one of which was the Conasauga River watershed. 2 highlights the importance of having a designated, skilled and respected coordinator who is able to rally and guide the diverse organizations in a partnership towards shared objectives. From Interested Citizens to Incorporated Organization: Formation of the Partnership Partnerships seldom arise in whole form nor do they appear overnight. Each begins from the initiative of a single individual or organization, usually focused on a particular issue or problem and in a way that engages the attention and involvement of others. The seeds for the Conasauga River Alliance were sown by an initiative taken by the Limestone Valley Resource Conservation Development Council (RC&D). In 1995, RC&D received a $200,000 grant from the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) to study the Conasauga River watershed and suggest ways that the community could work together to improve the management of the river, particularly in addressing issues such as excess sediment, excess nutrients, and toxic chemicals3. A major feature of this study’s design was to engage interested citizens in Tennessee and Georgia in research about their watershed. A Steering Committee of local citizens assisted by technical advisors from private and government agriculture and conservation organizations guided the study through a series of participatory community meetings. After the study was completed in 1996, the citizens on the Steering Committee vowed to keep working together—thus was born the Conasauga River Alliance. The Alliance adopted the study’s concluding goals as its own: • Develop respect for natural resources and provide conservation education • Protect private land rights • Sustain and improve a clean Conasauga River A Steering Committee of local citizens convened to oversee the work of the Alliance’s partner organizations, which do much of the work of the Alliance. The Forest Service Becomes a Vital Partner In 1999, the Forest Service selected the Conasauga River as one of the Chief’s Large- Scale Watershed Restoration Projects. The Cherokee National Forest and the Chattahoochee National Forest Supervisors, who oversee lands within the Conasauga River watershed, decided to create a position within the Forest Service to bridge the two Forests 3 Conasauga River Ecosystem-Based Assistance Study: One of Ten Nationwide Pilot Projects to Provide Ecosystem-Based Assistance for the Management of Natural Resources. August 1996. The Limestone Valley Resource Conservation and Development Council, Inc. 3 and focus on the watershed. In 1999, Kent Evans was hired as the Forest Service Conasauga River Project Coordinator, and he began his work by building a business plan for the Conasauga River Alliance, a document required of all Forest Service large-scale nationally-significant watershed restoration projects.4 Evans and George Ivey, TNC’s Conasauga River Project Manager at the time, wrote the plan together. They attempted to unite all of the partners’ goals into a single document,5 but doing so was not easy. By 2000, there were a handful of partners in the 36-partner group who were active on a daily basis, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Forest Service, Limestone Valley RC&D, USDA NRCS, The Nature Conservancy, and the Southeast Aquatic Research Institute. Other partners include Dalton State College, Dalton Utilities, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, North Georgia Regional Development Center, Tennessee Aquarium, and more.6 The Steering Committee (now Board of Directors) convenes every two months and hears updates from the Alliance partners on the work being conducted in the watershed. In response to the large amounts of grant money that the partners have acquired, the Steering Committee has sometimes developed special subcommittees that make project funding allocation decisions. Initially, the Alliance had no paid staff of its own. Similarly, while the Alliance had a set of guiding goals and boundless enthusiasm when established in 1996, it had no funding to conduct Alliance-specific projects. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and RC&D helped to fill these holes by providing staff, organizational, and financial support to the partnership. RC&D hired one person on contract from TNC to help to run the Alliance and also secured a $380,000 Section 319(h) Non Point Source Pollution grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, matched in part by The Nature Conservancy. The grant funds a five- year project through 2005 designed to implement eight “corrective action” Best Management Practices (BMPs) to address high levels of fecal coliform bacteria in the Perry Creek subwatershed and 16 “demonstration” BMPs to address nonpoint source pollution from agriculture, forestry, suburban and urban runoff, habitat modification, and 4 May 15, 2000. Conasauga River Alliance Business Plan: Conasauga River Watershed Ecosystem Project. Prepared in Collaboration by George Ivey, Conasauga River Project Manager, Conasauga River Alliance and Kent Evans, Project Coordinator, Cherokee and Chattahoochee national Forests, Southern Region of the United States Department of Agriculture—Forest Service. Accessed at: http://www.conasaugariver.net/backgrnd.html. 5 Can be downloaded at http://www.conasaugariver.net/backgrnd.html. 6 Other partners include: University of Tennessee, University of Georgia, DOW Chemical, Trout Unlimited, Conservation Fisheries Inc., Auburn University, National Wild Turkey Federation, Appalachian Sportsmen's Club, Pacific Rivers Council, Georgia Forest Watch, EPA, USFWS, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and the Georgia Forestry Commission. 4 transportation corridors in the Conasauga River watershed.7 The grant also supports public conservation education and water quality monitoring programs. Shawn Clouse, TNC’s current Conasauga River Project Manager, is the field representative who conducts much of the proposed field work outlined in the EPA grant. Eight years after its initial formation, in March 2003, the Conasauga River Alliance incorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The Conasauga River Alliance Steering Committee became the group’s Board of Directors to reflect its

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