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Notes:
Examples of watershed stewardship programs include the following:
Watershed Advocacy: Promoting watershed advocacy is important because it can lay the foundations for public support and greater watershed stewardship. Watershed organizations can be forceful advocates for better land management and can develop broad popular support and involvement for watershed protection. In many watersheds, local governments create or direct the watershed management structure.
Watershed Education: Educating the public about the watershed they live in is critical to the protection of the resource. Four elements of watershed education are: watershed awareness, personal stewardship, professional training, and watershed engagement.
Pollution Prevention: In some cases, local or state government may have a regulatory responsibility to develop pollution prevention programs for certain businesses and industrial categories (e.g., under industrial or municipal NPDES permits).
Watershed Maintenance: Some of the most critical watershed "maintenance" functions include management of conservation areas and buffer networks, and maintenance of stormwater practices, septic systems, and sewer networks. Maintenance of the quality of watersheds may even require some reforestation and can also provide an opportunity for public involvement and education.
Watershed Indicator Monitoring: An ongoing stewardship responsibility is to monitor key indicators to track the health of the watershed. Public agencies should seriously consider monitoring to provide high quality and low cost indicator data.
Watershed Restoration: The last phase of watershed stewardship is to restore or rehabilitate streams that have been degraded by past development.