Public investment in environmentally sustainable water infrastructure is crucially needed for the health and safety of our communities and waterways, and strong and authentic relationships between local community groups and water systems built on trust are vital to achieving equitable and sustainable water systems. Answering this need, community-based organizations and water systems across the country have come together, for example, to distribute water filters, conduct water quality monitoring, implement green infrastructure, develop needed workforces, and protect sources of drinking water. To be successful and long lasting, these types of partnerships between water systems and community groups depend on core operating strategies such as robust stakeholder engagement and participation in program design, increasing transparency, and open lines of communication.
River Network and WaterNow Alliance teamed up to find the best of these experiences and learn from them. The following nine communities are part of this initial group:
- West Virginia Rivers Coalition and Harper’s Ferry Water Commission
- Heartland Conservation Alliance and Kansas City Water
- Healthy Community Systems and Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans
- Santa Cruz Water Supply Commission and Santa Cruz Department of Water
- Sonoran Environmental Research Institute and Tucson Water
- Schuykill Action Network and Philadelphia Water Department
- Groundwork Ohio River Valley and Sanitation District Number 1 of Northern Kentucky
- Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and Richmond Department of Public Utilities
- CHN Housing Partners and Northeast Ohio Regional Sewage District
Based on the best practices we’ve learned so far, and to support the development of new partnerships, we are seeking several new partners to join this effort. We will select three (3) community group/water system partnerships that have a shared commitment to growing their partnership and testing out the best practices.
For the purposes of this program, “partnership-building project” is defined as “efforts to develop a strong and authentic relationship between a local community group and water system (defined as any local water agency, utility, department or authority that is responsible for managing drinking water, stormwater and/or wastewater) that is built on trust and focused on achieving shared goals related to equitable and sustainable water management.”
We will provide each partnership with $5,000 in funding support and with technical assistance valued at $5,000 to develop and deploy a partnership-building initiative in their community, which could include:
- Identifying shared goals, benefits, and value
- Developing new approaches for how water-systems partner with the community
- Deepening community groups’ understanding of utilities’ roles and responsibilities
- Evolving water-system roles to more broadly provide community value
- Creating transparency and systems of honest feedback
- Restoring trust
- Including the community in water-system decision making
- Building off personal relationships to a more formalized partnership
- Creating continuity and long-term partnership engagement
Support will be provided for five months starting in mid-February, 2021. Organizations interested in applying can find the application in Word version here, and then should submit a Grant Application via the online form no later than Friday, January 29, 2021, at 11:59 pm ET.
Final decisions will be made by Monday, February 8, 2021.
Lessons learned from these related efforts will be synthesized into a set of “best practices” to be shared and applied broadly by other communities looking to create similar partnership-based initiatives and increased trust.