Headwaters: For the Love of Home, Watershed groups act locally to protect rivers Summer 2010

Throughout the state of Colorado, local, citizen-driven, and rural, mountain, urban, and suburban grassroots groups have organized to advocate for the protection of their watersheds. Motivated for various reasons--sustainability, cleanup, fire prevention, ecological and aesthetic preservation--these groups act as watchdogs for the state's water resources. In the Gunnison basin, The High Country Citizens Alliance, originally formed to contest molybdenum mining, now spearhead the clean up of the Standard Mine on Mount Emmons. In the Arkansas basin, The Fountain Creek Watershed, Flood Control and Greenway District, mandated by the Colorado legislature, monitors and develops solutions for urban drainage problems. In the Rio Grande basin, the Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust seeks to protect and conserve the beauty of the region from developers. In the South Platte basin, the Tarryall Creek Ranch purchase, by Park County and Colorado Open Lands. Also in the South Platte basin, the Coalition for the Upper South Platte joined citizens to combat the effects of fires on the watershed, initially the Buffalo Creek Fire in 1996 and then the Hayman Fire in 2002. The issue quoted Carol Ekarius, "Eighty-five percent of the population of Colorado gets at least a portion of its water from this watershed . . . Joe Q. Citizen has no clue" of the impact of fire on water quality. According to the issue, the impetus for the growth in number of these groups stems from policy changes in the Environmental Protection Agency in 1987. That year the U. S. Congress differentiated the treatment of point source from non-point source pollution. Because point source pollution derived from the manner in which communities engaged economically and socially, Congress encouraged local participation in non-point source pollution solutions.  "Section 319 of the amended Clean Water Act provided EPA money, channeled through state agencies, for specific non-point source projects" (p. 7).

Check out the website of the publisher, Colorado Foundation for Water Education, at
http://www.cfwe.org/