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Community Buy-in for Stormwater Funding: An EPA Roundtable Series
Citation:
ten Brink, M., C. Hulet, K. Mulvaney, J. Twichell, A. Leiby, Joshua Secunda, AND B. Crossman. Community Buy-in for Stormwater Funding: An EPA Roundtable Series. EPA New England Webinar series: Soak up the Rain: https://www.epa.gov/soakuptherain/soak-rain-new-england-webinar-series, June 11, 2020.
Impact/Purpose:
Stormwater is one of our largest remaining threats to water quality, but managing stormwater and meeting permit requirements can be expensive. One of the greatest challenges for New England municipalities with a Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) is reaching consensus on stormwater program funding to support implementation of permit requirements and provide co- benefits to their citizens. Exploring funding mechanisms like “Stormwater Utilities” and “Stormwater Enterprise Funds” can be controversial, and public support is critical to success. This webinar will share successful strategies and best practices for community engagement and consensus-building from a pilot roundtable series launched in 2017 by the US EPA and the Consensus Building Institute. Over the course of several months, these roundtables helped municipal staff build skills and strategies to understand community concerns, develop effective partnerships, and achieve community support for stormwater funding. The webinar will feature the program developers, the roundtable facilitator, and a participating municipality that has implemented a stormwater enterprise fund. Presenters will cover key approaches, successful techniques, available resources, and lessons learned from the roundtables, as well as strategies for urban, suburban and rural municipalities exploring financing solutions to local stormwater management.
Description:
This presentation, “Community Buy-in for Stormwater Funding: An EPA Roundtable Series” is part of a panel the EPA Region 1 "Soak Up the Rain" webinar series. It describes the EPA Roundtable Series Piloted in 2017 and 2018 by the EPA Office of Research and Development in collaboration with EPA New England (Region 1) and the Consensus Building Institute. Each Pilot was comprised of a workshop series for a group of participating Municipalities and was designed using public participation and consensus building best practices to provide methods and training to assist these municipalities in getting community buy-in for stormwater funding. The presentation will cover development of the Pilots, implementation of the workshop series, content of the workshop, publications developed, lessons learned, and outcomes