Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2003NJ50B

Urban Watershed Management: Increasing Public "Ownership" of Watershed Resources

Institute: New Jersey
Year Established: 2003 Start Date: 2003-03-01 End Date: 2004-03-01
Total Federal Funds: $10,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $5,550

Principal Investigators: Richard Pardi

Project Summary: This project proposes to demonstrate that the most effective way to increase public participation in watershed protection is to increase public ownership of watershed resources. "Ownership would be obtained by the involvement of college, grade and high school students in the collection, analysis and evaluation of watershed data, directly related to current watershed issues. Local decision makers listen more intently to students than they do to professional scientists. Water testing of local urban streams will take place at the proposed educational center at Oldham Pond and will involve WPUNJ students, faculty, K-12 educators in several local districts, and their students. The success rate of the program will be assessed by monitoring the level of community environmental activity in the towns or districts that have sent student groups to programs at the Oldham Pond center. Initial funding for this information transfer project will provide monitoring equipment and data storage capability to train students and assemble data for improvement of understanding how urbanization and watershed restoration programs impact water resources.