Stewarding Wisconsin’s Water Resources: Going Beyond the Watershed with a Relational Approach

media release: UW Center for Sustainability & the Global Environment Weston Roundtable lecture, Room 1163.

Speaker: John Strauser, director of programs, Green Lake Association

As an agricultural state, a key focus area of water quality is addressing the impacts of non-point source agricultural pollution. Wisconsin has made many attempts to confront non-point source pollution, notably starting in 1978 with the inception of the Priority Watershed and Lakes Program. Despite decades of well-intentioned programs, it is fair to characterize that progress has been inadequate. Addressing non-point source pollution is a wicked problem in which achieving improved outcomes will not be easy or quick. However, there are lessons we can learn from our past in order to create better outcomes in the future. One lesson should be the consideration for how land use management, within any given watershed, is influenced by systemic changes in agriculture. Over the past 50 years, farming in Wisconsin has fundamentally changed. Not only should watershed management recognize the ways farming has evolved, but we should also embrace a relational place-making approach that anticipates and shapes the ways agriculture will continue to evolve into the future. By simply recognizing that the realities of a place – such as a watershed – are dynamic, we create a foundational shift in what it means to conduct watershed management. Watershed management goes from a focus of working at people to drive individual change to working with people to shape the realities of a place