For decades, healthy water quality in urban watersheds has been an elusive goal of the Clean Water Act. There have been serious barriers to progress, from a lack of dedicated funding and misinterpretation of regulations, to unimaginative planning and uninspired design. And nobody seemed to mind. Others continued to recycle the same, stale approaches year after year. In many ways, the system was broken.

 

But we weren’t ok with that. Over the years, our leaders deliberately built trusted relationships with the most proactive agencies and energized NGOs, who quickly learned the value of our clear-eyed approach. Then, new stormwater funding initiatives finally provided the momentum for us all to begin dismantling old paradigms and crafting a better system for real watershed change.