NRDP-EPA Partnerships
Here are some of the successful partnerships that State Councils have had
with the Environmental Protection Agency. For more information, please contact
Rick Wetherill in the Office of
Community Development.
The Idaho Rural Partnership has been the catalyst for the development of the Idaho One Plan project, which helps farmers deal with fragmented and complex federal regulations, particularly those requiring an on-farm conservation plan. Other leading partners are: Idaho Soil Conservation Commission, US Environmental Protection Agency, Idaho Cooperative Extension System, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Idaho Department of Agriculture. The Council provides extensive meeting facilitation, concept paper drafting, and seed funding, and has played a central role in bringing all partners into this project. The One Plan Project consolidates all the relevant information from over a dozen agencies, and presents it in a GIS-based, downloadable planning prototype which farmers can use to develop a plan while still keeping their business information confidential. On October 28, 1999 the IRP Executive Director briefed Rick Farrell, Director, Office of Policy and Reinvention, EPA and others on the Idaho One Plan.
In August 1996, the Idaho Rural Partnership received the Vice President's Hammer Award for bringing together a variety of public organizations and citizens to change the way federal and state regulatory agencies work with rural and small communities to achieve compliance with environmental statutory and regulatory mandates. The Idaho Community Mandates Pilot Project resulted from the IRP's work on building collaboration on regulatory compliance, and has reinvented the approach taken by the Idaho Division on Environmental Quality and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency in ensuring compliance with federal and state mandates and regulations. The approach has moved from one of "command and control" to one that empowers local communities and governments to create a community-driven prioritization process for achieving such compliance.
Minnesota Rural Partners convened Council partners with interests in the Minnesota River watershed and forestry to develop a strategy which has become the Minnesota River Agro-Forestry Initiative which promotes agroforestry in an environmentally sensitive way. MRP's Executive Director served on the Minnesota River Citizens'Advisory Committee that provides oversight on a variety of development projects in the Minnesota River watershed. In these related efforts, the MRP is raising awareness and promoting good conservation processes and practices, assisting development of a tree-growing industry and bio-mass energy production in Minnesota, and supporting the work of the Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) Councils.
The Nebraska Rural Development Commission developed a pilot Nebraska Mandates Management Initiative which has assisted 200 small rural communities. A team of state and federal environmental and technical representatives helped each community through a strategic process to explore and determine their environmental compliance priorities on the basis of environmental, public health and safety criteria. Using regulatory flexibility, each community was able to select the least-cost, performance-based solution to achieve the community's top priority environmental goal. The initiative put state environmental people in the field to monitor the program. The teams helped communities work toward developing a financial investment program for compliance priorities. This effort changed the attitudes of many rural people toward environmental enforcement agencies from seeing these agencies as an enemy to believing they could be trusted. Currently, the state is providing small grants to communities for pre-engineering consultations on the least-cost alternatives to achieve their goals. This program has been replicated by the Iowa Rural Development Council, with similar successes.
The Oklahoma Rural Development Council has created 18 multi-county coalitions made up of all the key local players to strategically address regional issues, including adequate clean water supply, tourism, economic development, and others. Each coalition pursues its own projects, but the ORDC serves as the connection among the coalitions for sharing of information, successes, and challenges. An example is the Tenkiller Lake Coalition, formed in 1994. This region has 29 separate water districts, some with inadequate water treatment facilities, and approximately 30 percent of the citizens are not being served by any system. Many of the underserved are Native Americans. The SRDC assisted by assembling a team of federal and state experts to conduct an inventory and analysis. The first two phases of a three-phase study has been completed by the Army Corps of Engineers on the feasibility of a large-scale, non-profit water organization to supply regional water systems with affordable clean water via a state-of-the-art wholesale treatment and conveyance system. Phase three will be completed in 2000. Construction is expected to begin within the next three years. Key players in the work to date include three rural electric cooperatives, three rural water associations, the Tahlequah Public Works Authority, the Cherokee Hills RC&D, the Cherokee Nation, and the Army Corp of Engineers.
The Wyoming Rural Development Council is assisting Wyoming Conservation Districts in developing community outreach plans for watershed planning for the State of Wyoming. The Conservation Districts received EPA and Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality grants to complete this project. WRDC partnered with the Wyoming Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Conservation Service to develop a program to facilitate community outreach. This work included assisting Conservation District Boards in defining their roles, responsibilities and authorities. This effort led many of the Districts to begin strategic planning.
In November 1995 the EPA issued a policy permitting more flexible enforcement responses in small communities. Officials credited projects in Idaho, Nebraska and Oregon, including the roles of SRDCs in some of those states (see above), as providing models for this new policy.
