Landowner Engagement
Landowner engagement helps drive UMRWP actions. Because of landowner feedback to surveys, we learned about many water quality concerns, some of which we’ve already found solutions for!
Throughout the planning process, we actively engaged the public. The UMRWP hosted 10 public meetings and held quarterly stakeholder meetings. We used GIS to identify landowners adjacent to waterways with 20 acres or more and sent direct mail surveys to 1600 of these landowners. Figure 1 to the right shows areas with the highest landowner response to direct mail surveys. The word cloud in Figure 2 shows the biggest concerns voiced by these landowners. If you have any concerns about water quality that you’d like to share, please select the “Report Concerns” button below.
In-Demand Best Managment Pratices
Our direct mail surveys also asked landowners which BMPs they would be interested in implementing on their land. Based on our survey, the most in-demand BMPs were drainage water management, cover crops, and grassed waterways (Figure 3). Many of these in-demand BMPs were included in the Action Strategy of the WMP (Action Strategy tab above).
FIG 1 | Many people responded to our social indicator survey. Various regions in the watershed had higher a higher concentration of respondents which motivated us to further investigate these areas.
FIG 2 | People expressed a primary concern about erosion issues and logjams. We have been able to securing funding to remove the largest logjams on the Mississinewa River.
FIG 3 | Project managers analyzed responses and identified Best Management Practices that were in demand by local landowners.