Successfully Navigating Large-scale Watershed Master Planning While Maximizing Funding Opportunities: The Pilot Approach
Ward Marotti
Education Track: MS4 Management
Undertaking jurisdiction-wide watershed master planning can be daunting for communities, as they often know that the planning process is critical to creating a roadmap for their stormwater program. It can be difficult to determine the most efficient way to not only undertake the planning process, but later fund the implementation of its results (e.g. capital improvements and regulatory revisions/updates). There is a delicate balance that must be struck between cost and value. The reality is that doing jurisdiction-wide master planning can get expensive quickly and the last thing a local government wants is for their program to invest a significant amount of resources in a planning process, only to find out after it has been completed that it may not be exactly what they envisioned and/or did not adequately address information required for grant/loan applications. After working with communities across the Southeast for many years, WK Dickson has found that the best way to optimize the balance between cost and value, while simultaneously maximizing implementation funding opportunities, is to select a pilot watershed to clearly define what is needed, what is wanted, and what provides the best value/return on investment.