LINKING LOCAL WATERSHED PLANNING AND STATE BASINWIDE PLANNING IN THE UPPER NEUSE RIVER BASIN, NC

A watershed approach developed for the Upper Neuse River Basin in North Carolina provides a model for how to integrate local and basinwide planning to achieve success at both levels. For many years, watershed management practitioners have extolled the virtues of partnerships in achieving management success. However, its one thing to talk about partnerships and collaboration, and another to actually accomplish them. How do governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals with different perspectives – and often with competing objectives – work together effectively? The reality is that it usually takes more than a single grass roots effort or an agency-driven plan to achieve long-lasting and comprehensive management success. Meaningful management (i.e., management that stimulates actions that restore and protect watershed resources) involves all aspects of a community, and coordinating a community can be quite a challenge. This paper reviews how fourteen local jurisdictions (that together comprise the Upper Neuse River Basin in North Carolina) are working with key state agencies and organizations to implement a long-term approach for coordinating local watershed and state basin management.