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	<img alt="" class="border-left" src="{filedir_5}Josh-Miller-150pxl(1).jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 210px; float: right; " />In late 2011, as a student in the Environmental Policy and Planning program at the University of Michigan <a href="http://snre.umich.edu">School of Natural Resources and Environment</a>, I was generously offered the opportunity to work part-time as an intern with the <a href="http://www.hrwc.org">Huron River Watershed Council</a> (HRWC) in Ann Arbor. At that time, I was unaware that HRWC was one of the leading watershed councils in the nation. Since then, I have come to understand why. This summer I extended my work with them into a full-time internship. Let me tell you a little bit about the HRWC and my work with them over the summer.</p>
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	The HRWC was founded as a government-supported body by the counties and communities within the Huron River watershed. Since that time, they have gathered significant public support and now receive only one third of their annual budget from government members. This is due to the quality of their work over the past 50 years, and especially to the quality of their volunteer water monitoring program. They have compiled one of the oldest and most complete data sets for any river in Michigan, and their statistics are relied upon by Michigan agencies like the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Because they have the data, people listen when they point out a problem or a priority. That has earned them the right to work collaboratively with local governments, businesses, social groups, and landowners to target everything from brownfield cleanups to improved stormwater management.</p>
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	The Michigan DEQ recently handed to them the responsibility of determining how to move forward with Green Infrastructure (GI) planning for stormwater in Washtenaw County. GI is the use of natural features to keep stormwater on-site for infiltration instead of funneling it to the nearest stream and collecting pollution along the way. It includes such common features as green roofs, porous pavement, and rain gardens. Though the hydraulics and economics of GI are solid (e.g., Chicago, Seattle, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Syracuse are all using GI to eliminate Combined Sewer Overflows), it still lacks momentum for wide-scale implementation. It was our job this summer to figure out why, at least in Washtenaw County, the county which holds most of the watershed and its major cities.</p>
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	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}map_huron.jpg" style="width: 300px; height: 225px; float: right; " />After extensive background research, we conducted interviews with municipal stormwater managers and planners, the Water Resources Commissioner, and the Road Commission. We found many barriers to GI, but I will highlight only one of the most important: there is no one legally responsible for the watershed, and the various entities involved often have conflicting mandates (of course in retrospect this seems obvious since a watershed doesn&rsquo;t track with any political boundaries). For example, the DEQ enforces &ldquo;safe&rdquo; levels of pollution in our streams, but the Road Commission has the responsibility of getting water off of and away from roads as quickly as possible. Given what we know about nonpoint source pollution (pollution from runoff), these two mandates set themselves almost directly at odds. To completely fulfill one mandate, the other must be sacrificed, yet compromising between the two leaves both unfulfilled.&nbsp;</p>
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	These kinds of conflicting mandates exist at all levels throughout the watershed leading to policies that can be frustrating for developers, environmental stewardship organizations, state resource managers, and citizens. GI, by facilitating both adequate drainage and pollution filtration on-site, has emerged as a non-compromising solution to both kinds of mandates. Yet GI is not prioritized at any level of government because, (1) funding mechanisms do not support it; (2) township/municipality/county planning often is not integrated across jurisdictions; (3) while municipality-wide benefits of GI outweigh costs, sometimes cost outweigh benefits at the site-level; (4) government maintenance crews are not equipped to perform GI maintenance, which requires both a different maintenance regime and a different body of knowledge; and (5) there is still uncertainty involved in some GI practices, especially as it relates to specific climactic, topographic, or geologic conditions. It is the desire of the HRWC to overcome these barriers and see broad implementation of GI throughout the watershed.</p>
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	This is a sample of the policy and planning issues I dug into this summer with the Watershed Council. The work is challenging and requires a great deal of patience, understanding, and creativity, as well as a long-term commitment to stewardship. I was grateful to be part of solving complex environmental challenges on this small swath of God&rsquo;s creation and look forward to building on my knowledge of watershed planning and stream ecology through coursework at the School of Natural Resources and Environment this year.</p>
