Itasca Waters
Report date
May 2021
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
We recognized that none of the behavioral or public perception innovation we were hoping to create would be sustained without the support of public leadership. Itasca Waters was successful in its early years by targeting decision makers on an issue-by-issue basis. This grant enabled us to broaden our scope by targeting Itasca area township, city and county elected officeholders as a key stakeholder group. During Year 1 of the project, we listened to dozens of elected officials explain how clean water affected their community’s health and economic wellbeing. We learned that while most did not perceive immediate threats to water quality, virtually all were supportive of efforts to maintain water quality. During Year 2 we asked for formal endorsements of the Itasca Clean Water Resolution. Roughly 30 townships and cities and the Itasca County Board of Commissioners took public stands supporting clean water. These resolutions of support are significant because they can be the basis of future decisions by those elected officials to approve policy changes relating to water usage and shoreline usage setbacks. These public bodies will also make decisions about allocating tax dollars.
During the project, Itasca Waters sponsored extensive engagement processes (surveys, interviews and focus groups) with segments of the community we perceived as having economic stakes in sustaining clean water. We wanted to learn from these key stakeholders about ways the quality of water in area lakes, rivers and streams impacts their lives and what they thought should be done to protect water quality (“How might we close the gap between best known water quality protection practices and people’s behavior?”). We invited feedback from business owners, young adults, older adults, the arts community, resort owners, lake associations, lakeshore property owners, fishing guides, tribal members, realtors, and the general public. Each stakeholder group identified different ways to influence behavior of people within their affinity group, but common themes included education, public awareness, values, trust building, financial support of advocacy groups, and better enforcement of existing regulations governing shoreland usage. What was learned through the engagement process became the building blocks of future solutions in water preservation efforts.
One of our objectives that emerged throughout the engagment process was the need to shift community consciousness from taking water quality for granted to one of gratitude for and appreciation of the area’s water resources and developing a shared responsibility and commitment to protect them. We found we needed to do more grassroots organizing and reach different audiences in different ways: social media, newspaper advertising, radio advertising, signage, billboards, one-on-one relational meetings and more. During this project we identified additional public and nonprofit entities who are have a stake in water quality preservation. There is an opportunity to coordinate and thereby amplify efforts, and build a cohesive cross-sector movement.
Key lessons learned
Most elected officials understood the value of clean water to the physical and economic health of their communities. When asked to support the Clean Water Resolution, most of the public bodies approved it unanimously. Some even asked what more they could do to be supportive of clean water beyond endorsing a resolution. Other city councils and township boards, however, were reluctant to support even a nonbinding resolution; they were fearful it might lead to unintended consequences, including more oversight by other government (county, state or federal) units. The support for or apprehension about the resolution was usually linked to their mindset about localized water quality issues. “All politics is local.” Understanding how that axiom impacts the work of cultivating local support for change and innovation is critical in this project.
People don’t change their behavior simply by being provided information. Rather than simply attempting to increase people’s knowledge, we found we needed to bear in mind the context of people’s lives. We found that our public awareness efforts needed to start simply and work towards complexity, with each step building off the previous one. Most people value clean water, but they don’t connect the dots between their actions and water quality because “clean water is all around us” in Itasca County. The message of the importance of clean water to their lives has to compete with other concerns in their lives: jobs, housing, family security, and more. The awareness-raising work must be sustained over the long haul to be effective.
Covid prevented us from safely hosting a large community gathering to celebrate our clean water resources and highlight all the ways people are working to preserve it. This felt like a failure, but we pivoted accordingly and have the event planned for later this summer.
Reflections on the community innovation process
The most important element was creating a shared understanding of the value and importance of our clean water. We learned that in order to create shared responsibility in the preservation of our water, we had to identify simple actions that would have the biggest impact and actions that all people can take. We coupled this with increasing the collective understanding of the need for people in positions of power to stand with water quality advocates in order to make the preservation of water a top priority in all economic and community development efforts throughout Itasca County.
This wasn’t a linear process, it required us to listen to, and learn from, a lot of people. We identified themes in what we were hearing so we could take community-informed action, and then we had to reflect on the action we took in order to make sure we were creating our intended impact. The action reflection process helped us realize we needed to do some widespread public awareness campaigning to get the importance of our water front and center in people’s minds.
This wasn’t a linear process, it required us to listen to, and learn from, a lot of people. We identified themes in what we were hearing so we could take community-informed action, and then we had to reflect on the action we took in order to make sure we were creating our intended impact. The action reflection process helped us realize we needed to do some widespread public awareness campaigning to get the importance of our water front and center in people’s minds.
Progress toward an innovation
We are making progress. We know now that the social, political, economic and ecological dimensions of this work require us to think holistically about preservation. Our next step is to implement a cohesive coordinated community response to ensure the preservation of our water. This will be a huge step towards achieving innovation. It has never been done in our county before. It will be founded on a shared understanding of what would be lost if behavior on the land diminishes our water quality. We have identified key components that need to be working together to form a water quality protection model:
Create shared value and behaviors.
Encourage advocacy, education and public awareness.
Create public policy.
Enforcement and Implementation of policies.
Monitor and assess water quality.
We are much closer to a more effective and sustainable approach now than when we started the grant. Since community engagement is both a process and an outcome, many more people are now consciously thinking about the importance of our water and the actions that need to be taken to preserve our water forever.
Create shared value and behaviors.
Encourage advocacy, education and public awareness.
Create public policy.
Enforcement and Implementation of policies.
Monitor and assess water quality.
We are much closer to a more effective and sustainable approach now than when we started the grant. Since community engagement is both a process and an outcome, many more people are now consciously thinking about the importance of our water and the actions that need to be taken to preserve our water forever.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
We plan to take community engagement efforts completed over the past two years to the next level by harnessing growing momentum for preserving our water to implement a cohesive coordinated community response. We will mobilize influential stakeholders - water quality advocates, lake associations, business owners, and elected officials, to pursue a targeted, community-generated strategy to preserve our water. We believe that creating cohesion in water quality preservation approaches among these groups is key to affecting long standing change.
The coordinated community response will be designed to continue to generate a shared understanding of the benefits of our clean water, and ways to continuously measure those benefits so the value of our clean water can more easily be incorporated in the decision making of elected officials and other key stakeholders. It will focus on implementation of identified best shoreland practices across Itasca County. The cohesion created by this effort will be so much more effective than the fragmented approach we currently have and will achieve innovation.
The coordinated community response will be designed to continue to generate a shared understanding of the benefits of our clean water, and ways to continuously measure those benefits so the value of our clean water can more easily be incorporated in the decision making of elected officials and other key stakeholders. It will focus on implementation of identified best shoreland practices across Itasca County. The cohesion created by this effort will be so much more effective than the fragmented approach we currently have and will achieve innovation.
What's next?
We will continue to raise awareness about the value of our water and steps all people can take to help preserve it. We are planning to launch a Clean Water Initiative. Initially, the initiative’s primary target audience will be lake associations and shoreland owners. The objective will be to engage lake associations and shoreland owners to become leaders in water quality preservation efforts by taking strategic action using the framework of the Clean Water Initiative which focuses on three proven shoreland best practices: (1) Reducing runoff and preventing erosion by preserving or restoring natural shoreline vegetation. (2) Curbing pollution by reducing phosphorus and other pollutants from entering the water through septic compliance inspections and replacing non-compliant septic systems. (3) Stopping the spread of aquatic invasive species (AIS) by developing early-detection initiatives and implementing the Itasca County AIS program.
If you could do it all over again...
To trust the process and principles of community engagement, community organizing, and ultimately social change - research (listen), act, evaluate. And it can't be done alone, affecting social change requires a diverse collective of people. This is critical to remember during the times when you feel like you're aren't making much headway or the days when you feel like you're the only group of people who are intentionally looking out for the best interest of the water.
One last thought
This opportunity has really given us a chance to gain an 'eagle eye view' of the problem we seek to address. From that vantage point we can clearly see the opportunity to bring cohesion to water preservation efforts and believe that that cohesion will build capacity in everyone involved and ultimately lead to preserving our water forever.