Watershed Management Planning

    One of HCCA's largest goals for this year is looking at watershed management planning as the population of the west continues to grow and the demand for water increases. Since our community is at one of the major headwaters of the Colorado, we have both the responsibility to manage it in a way that provides for our community, but also provides for other communities down stream. The biggest piece of watershed management is planning so that each use of water can be met. These uses range from agriculture to recreation. These management steps are taken in order to protect our current water needs so if implications should arise in the future, the plans to solve them have already been thought through.
    Combining my internship's goal of outreach and connecting Western to HCCA and a service learning project for one of my classes, I have decided to put on a Watershed Management Planning Meeting. The goal of this meeting is to inform students and the community about watershed management, why it's important, and what they can do to help. This meeting will include speakers from all different backgrounds: Julie Nania from HCCA, Jesse Kruthaupt from Trout Unlimited, and Frank Kugel from the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District. They will give short presentations from their point of view on this issue and how the valley is working to move forward on watershed management.
    Students from ENVS 100 classes will be helping me get everything in order. Together, we will make posters, contact clubs around campus, send out PSA's to newspapers and radio stations, and brainstorm how to advertise this event in other ways. It's important to get this topic as far out there as we can because it really can affect everyone. Survey's will be handed out during this event as well. The more feedback we can get about this process the better. The more diverse feedback we can get the even better off that we are! It's so important to get points of view from a large range of people from different backgrounds in order to make watershed management decisions about a resource used by all.