Posts Tagged ‘National Dialogue for the Future of America’s Waterway’

Chesapeake Bay Strategy Offers Context for Mississippi River

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

In declaring the Chesapeake Bay a national treasure and committing to a robust clean-up effort, President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency are creating a policy context for the futures of great American water bodies. “This is the broadest and most publicly accountable cleanup effort ever seen on the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

While the legislation will be in public comment stage until May, Executive Order 13508 set the tone last May. The draft strategy released this month addresses not only clean water initiatives, but those that would address treasured places, protect wildlife and fish, and climate change impacts.

The most interesting feature of the strategy, from the perspective of other great American water bodies, is the emphasis to empower local efforts because “local governments, watershed organizations and residents have a great interest and ability to restore the environment.”   That’s for sure.  This incorporates a key component of any public policy  — the grass roots.  The draft strategy apparently outlines a Chesapeake Conservation Corps, too, that would be pursued to increase citizen stewardship and engage people in protecting local waterways. This, too, speaks to local citizen involvement.

We applaud this effort to get people involved with the Chesapeake as their waterway. But if this is to be a context for other great American water bodies, why not tap into citizen involvement in a more engaging way as the strategy and legislation are being created?  We know that human beings are more effectively engaged if they feel a sense of ownership. That sense of ownership should be cultivated early in the policy development stage and not wait until the policy is about to launch. We know that the Mississippi River, another great American water body, has many residents interested in its future, and we think engagement starts with building a shared vision for that future.

The premise of a partnership between local governments, people and the federal government isn’t new.  And no doubt a project-oriented vehicle for citizen involvement is a great step toward citizen engagement.  But it comes as an adjunct to federal action.

At America’s Waterway, we’re anxious to see the residents of the Mississippi River — from all walks of life including government, science, economic development and arts and heritage — have a say in the actual policy development through a National Dialogue for the Future of America’s Waterway. Facilitated by AmericaSpeaks, it taps a proven methodolgy for capturing grass roots sentiment and enables it to form the basis for comprehensive approaches to the future.

If you have an interest in seeing more citizen involvement in the federal plan for the Chesapeake, comment at the web site linked above. If you think citizen involvement in planning for great American water bodies – or for any water shed you love — is important, comment on this blog and join with us in this effort on behalf of America’s Waterway.

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Mississippi River Waterfronts Add Up to More than Dollars and Cents

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Riverfront developments up and down the Mississippi River add more value to their communities than just dollars and cents. One reason is that River planning - when done right - is a tool for civic engagement. 

But it goes beyond mere participation. Every person along the Mississippi River has an emotional tie to the River. For some it’s economy-based; for others environmental. For others still  it’s culture or tradition. For some it’s recreation and active access to the River. It’s these feelings and connections to the River that enrich and expand the planning process. Residents’ input allows riverfront developments to be more textured, multi-faceted and supported than past projects and developments were without public input.

And it’s happening all along the River. Whether it’s Memphis or St. Paul; New Orleans or Dubuque, the River captures the hearts and minds of local residents. That plays out in festivals, fundraisers and formalized community conversations. All of these activities capture and convey shared ideas and values for the way the community wants to relate to the Mississippi River. As time goes by, these shared values take root and make it possible,  at the local level, to formalize these perceptions in riverfront development or redevelopment.

Collectively, these developments — and the communities they represent — show us the dynamic nature of the Mississippi River. While there is no such thing as a national Mississippi Riverfront, a mechanism exists to create the same kind of engagement  for the whole River that riverfront developments are creating for parts of the River.

If you’d like to know more about riverfront developments, click on the communities listed above and on the October 2009 edition of River Currents. If you’d like to know more about the National Dialogue for the Future of America’s Waterway, check that out as well at www.americaswaterway.org. Most important, if you believe it’s time to start this process and move forward with a vision and agenda for the whole Mississippi River, contact us at alewis@americaswaterway.org.  Leave a comment here, too, and start the dialogue.

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Reflections on a Confluence

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

Confluence can mean a couple different things.  It often pertains to a literal flowing together from several sources. Then it can mean the coming together of  people as in an assemblage or congress. And in the case of rivers, it’s used to pertain to the merging of more than one tributary in such a way that they become one physically and take on new characteristics.

Interestingly, last week’s Visions of a Sustainable Mississippi River Conference took place near the great confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers being celebrated and documented with a new  National Great Rivers Research and Education Center. At the same time, the conference itself was a confluence —  bringing together people from different locations and vantage points — to  share ideas about the Mississippi River, its ecological, economic and cultural values.

The people at the NGRREC, including the partner institutions of Lewis and Clark Community College, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne and the Illinois Natural History Survey were great at the confluence thing. They appear to be used to partnering, so bringing together many people with a wide variety of expertise was executed professionally. Even more important, the process maximized the sharing of ideas and the written delivery of those ideas to a panel of policy makers at the conference’s conclusion.

However, the vision part of the conference was more complicated.  As one who has helped numerous organizations struggle with their vision, either to accomodate a new direction or to transition an organization, I knew it wouldn’t be easy.  And the conference seemed to agree because after an hour and a half of trying to state a vision, one of the participants voiced the obvious, “Visions are better left to a long-term, deliberative process. We can’t do this in a morning or with just these people in the room.”

That’s why it was heartening to hear Brigadier General Michael Walsh, head of the Mississippi River Commission and head of the Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi River Valley state his view that the Mississippi River needs a 200-year, unified and multigenerational vision. What I didn’t hear was how he plans to secure that vision. An op-ed in this morning’s New York Times  by James Fishkin makes the case for deliberative processes that ensure that all interested parties are in the room.  I would add the involvement of river residents on a representative basis to ensure not only a vision, but the development of an involved and engaged constituency. 

No one seemed to dispute the need for a Mississippi River Vision. Granted, it would be hard to argue with someone like a Brigadier General when he says he thinks something’s needed. But I don’t think he’s alone. Let us know what you think by commenting here.

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Ever Think of the Mississippi River as an Orphan?

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Several speakers the first day of the Visions of a Sustainable Mississippi River Conference used the word “orphan” to describe the Mississippi River. If you think about it, the Mississippi River is just that: an orphaned national resource and monument, in spite of public acknowledgement of its value to the nation.

How is this so? Some of it’s due to the role the Mississippi River plays as a border to states. It’s easy for state regulators and tourism officials to not see what goes on at the fringe of their state, unless a major city or population center abuts it.

Then there’s the issue of multiple jurisdictions. The Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency,  and other regional and federal agencies are divided into districts. They tend to divide the Mississippi River for practical management reasons that made sense in an era when communication was more difficult and expensive. The natural topographical  differences of the River contribute to this approach as well.

From my perspective, the answer to the Mississippi River’s “orphan status” is its lack of a constituency willing to advocate on its behalf.  When you’re on the East Coast, you see active support for the Chesapeake Bay. Powerful Washington and state officials lend their support to local efforts, and residents sport bumper stickers and Save-the-Bay license plates. The Great Lakes, through a multi-year process to write and pass the Great Lakes Compact, have built a constituency largely because threats from other regions of the country highlighted the value of the lakes as a system.

We can end the orphan status of the Mississippi River. America’s Waterway embodies a plan to build that constituency and engage it via the internet and shared goals and objectives. The process takes all aspects of the River into account. It’s not just about clean water or preserved wetlands, our process seeks to take cultural heritage as well as community development  into account. In today’s social networking environment, that engagement can be maintained using the connectivity of the Internet.

The Mississppi River doesn’t have to be an orphan and this conference is demonstrating that there are a lot of people committed to ending that status. Today’s sessions will engage participants as well as experts to explore options for advocacy for the River. Tomorrow, a public policy panel will hear from the conference participants. It is a worthy introduction to a much needed effort.

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Unify the Vision - A Unified Mississippi Will Follow

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Paddlewheels, young boys with fishing poles, banjo music, horrific storms washing out dikes and a whole host of other images have come to represent the Mississippi River. These visions of the River come from history or from disasters or both.  But what of the River and its future? What is the contemporary vision of the Mississippi River?

This topic will be the subject of presentations and debate at an upcoming meeting in Collinsville, Illinois. While the title of the conference is Visions for a Sustainable Mississippi River, I doubt a unifying vision will emerge in one session. It’s a good first step.

That’s too bad because a unified vision is the basis for a unified Mississippi River. Many who read this will say the Mississippi River is too vast and too varying to produce a unified vision, but we know from our own history that it often took a unified vision to rally the kind of support needed to take monumental action. And that’s what’s called for in the case of the Mississippi River.

When President Kennedy wanted public support for space exploration, he captured the essence of that exploration (not every technological innovation it would take) in his image of a man on the moon. When President Eisenhower wanted public support for interstate highways, he created a vision of an interconnected U.S. thriving because of expedited commerce and family connectedness. More recently, President Obama wanted public support for the stimulus package, the unifying vision that enabled its passage was people going back to work. (There was also avoidance of a negative issue. The desire to avoid the images of the Great Depression were vividly unifying, too,)

There are ways to capture a vision for the Mississippi River and it calls for a more deliberate and continuous effort. In the public opinion arena, strategists often test imagery around issues to assess the positives and negatives. They come up with the images they think are right and then test them.

In marketing, focus groups of interested parties are often asked for their input first, before developing any images. That input is collected and massaged and tried out on consumers. With attention to including a cross section of consumer attitudes, marketing still holds a higher success rate than political strategists. However, leaders, if they are sensitive to public sentiments being expressed by their constituents and they are articulate enough to capture that sentiment, are often the best visionaries.

In the case of the vision for the Mississippi River, I hope for a mix of all three by engaging River residents in a National Dialogue on the Future of the Mississippi River. In the meantime if you have a vision for the Mississippi River, share it here.

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Shared Visions for the Mississippi River

Monday, July 27th, 2009

What does the Mississippi River look like? In New Orleans, it looks like an industrial boulevard. In the northern parts of Minnesota, it looks like a place to spend your spare time. In between it looks like everything in between.

What would it look like if all the residents of the Mississippi River banded together and discussed what they saw in common? What does a resource look like? What does a clean river look like? What should the Mississippi look like in the future?

In this blog, we’ll begin to explore these questions and more. Stay tuned.

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