I want to reach out to you to give you an update on the Watershed Coordinator Grant program at the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains.
The Watershed Coordinator program is funded by a three year grant from the California Department of Conservation, with support from an impressive array of community partners; the list follows on every email I send out. I am funded for a half time position as Coordinator and we have some additional partial funding that goes to our Senior Conservation Biologist Rosi Dagit as Co-Coordinator. The current funding cycle of this program will be completed in 45 hours.
Note that in the past, our community, meaning cities, agencies and a philanthropist, have bonded together to financially maintain the watershed coordinator program, with a wide array of partners funding the program together; as a result, we have been one of only two watersheds in the state of California to have created and funded an entirely community based watershed program.
During the duration of the current California Department of Conservation grant, Rosi Dagit and I have implemented most of the goals of our grant; current funding wins come to:
Grant proposals funded to date: $1,136,000.00
Non-grant funding funded to date: $598,455.65
My end goal for this grant is to complete the writing of the Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Plan. The current working draft is composed of a Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Council Project List created by a one hundred percent consensus based public facilitation process that elicited community input from a wide array of cities, agencies, non-profits, academics and concerned community members. Email me if you want to see at the draft project list.
One of the projects that has come out of the current grant is the web-based third edition of the Living Lightly In Our Watersheds project; the second editions was updated in 2005. The third edition is going to be web-based and will include a blog that is planned to run for three years. Currently, our Supervisor, cities and agencies have committed $45,000.00 towards this project. The ecoblog will include a Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Council newsletter once a month and an ecoblog once a month, which will focus on effective Best Management Practices for our community. To get an idea of what the ecoblog will be like, read this article I just wrote for Earth Island Journal onnativescaping. The commitment, knowledge and insight of RCDSMM Director Nancy Helsley was crucial to the implementation of both the first and second edition of the Living Lightly Guide manuals.
One of the projects from past DOC Watershed Coordinator grant efforts is the film starring actor / environmentalist Wendie Malick, The Clean Water Act and Our Backyards. The full film is now available on youtube; funders of the third edition of the Living Lightly Guide project want to have this accessible to our readership. If you have not watched this, I urge you to take the time to review this film to see how our communities aim to improve water quality. As a side note, this film was possible because of the leadership and vision of Susan Nissman and the generosity and vision of many partners, most especially Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. RCDSMM Director Nancy Helsley and former RCDSMM Director Carol Felixson were both central to the successful outcome of this project.
Email me if you would like to review the last three quarterly reports for the California Department of Conservation Watershed Coordinator Grant Program to give you a snapshot -- o.k., maybe more of verbal photo album -- of what has been going on with our watershed program.
There may be funding for six more months' work from current watershed coordinators, focusing on drought alleviation related work; stay tuned.
Looking forward, the vision of the watershed coordinator approach to ecosystem restoration has always been to create a watershed plan -- and then to implement the plan, piece by piece. As time goes on, the watershed plan is a living document that moves and grows as the people in the community ebb and flow. The core vision remains: to restore our whole watershed. Community successes like the Calabasas Creek Restoration, the Malibu Lagoon Restoration and the multiple city bans on rodenticide, styrofoam and plastic bags are direct outgrowths of education and planning efforts begun or continued within the context of the Malibu Creek Watershed Council, now grown up as the Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Council. Look at the historic 44 Action Items, the result of two years of work via a consensus-based facilitation effort by the original Malibu Creek Advisory Council and see how many things this process has achieved. It is stunning. I want to thank former RCDSMM President Dennis Washburn for having the idea that this was possible then helping to make it happen and I want to thank each of the original members of the Malibu Creek Watershed Advisory Council for creating a new way to achieve environmental restoration success.
Bringing in the best expert speakers on relevant subjects meeting after meeting, the watershed councils, coordinated by the RCDSMM staff and chaired for over a decade by our former RCDSMM President Dennis Washburn, have raised the level of understanding and conversation about key environmental issues -- bringing in the best minds in science, policy, activism, agriculture, perspective, hydrology, engineering to help us all to grow as a group. There is a magic to putting stakeholders from cities, agencies, non-profiits and community members together that allows for minds to open and change to happen, I am always impressed by how much knowledge and intelligence is in the room. Past and current coordinators have obtained funding and implemented piece by piece of the watershed plans both in Topanga and Malibu; for example, the recent $1,100,000.00 in IRWMP funding obtained by the City of Agoura HIlls fortheir long desired Medea Creek Restoration at Chumash Park is in hand because our watershed coordinator wrote the first draft of the grant for the city. This is how we heal a watershed, one project at a time.
Let me know if you would like to work together to develop a long term vision and plan for growing and maintaining the Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Council and for obtaining long term funding to continue to implement our community watershed goals.
For over twenty years, thanks to the initial courage of our community members and the RCDSMM Board of Directors and the evolving vision of an incredible array of environmental talent from throughout the Santa Monica Mountains including directors of boards, elected officials, city staff, agency staff and a number of outstanding academics, the former Malibu Creek Watershed Advisory Council and now Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Council has been a leader in the watersheds of the Santa Monica Mountains and in the State of California.
Let's grow and then exceed our environmental dreams for the Santa Monica Mountains in the years to come.
Walk in beauty.
Sincerely,
Melina Watts
Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Coordinator
Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains
malibucreekwatershed@gmail.com
http://www.rcdsmm.org/santa-
Melina Watts
Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Coordinator
Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains
malibucreekwatershed@gmail.com
http://www.rcdsmm.org/santa-
310.383.9978
Join the Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Council on facebook for updates on news and events.
Support the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains: Donate.
The Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Coordinator Program is a program of the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains and is funded by a Proposition 84 grant from the California Department of Conservation and via support from the Cities of Agoura Hills and Westlake Village, the California Department of State Parks, the California Association of Conservation Districts, Ozzie Silna, the National Park Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains.Dea
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