Mosher, Jeff

Jeff Mosher is the General Manager of the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA) where he oversees efforts to develop regional plans, programs,...

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About Mosher, Jeff

Jeff Mosher is the General Manager of the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA) where he oversees efforts to develop regional plans, programs, and projects that protect the Santa Ana River basin water resources to maximize beneficial uses within the watershed. At SAWPA, he is involved in a broad range of water resource issues including water supply reliability, water quality improvement, recycled water, wastewater treatment, groundwater management, and integrated regional planning.

Mosher, Jeff

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Description: Ethnographic Approach for a Watershed-Based Disadvantaged Community Involvement...

Ethnographic Approach for a Watershed-Based Disadvantaged Community Involvement Program

Abstract

Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA) implemented a watershed-wide Disadvantaged Community Involvement (DCI) Program between 2007 and 2021 to determine the strengths and needs of disadvantaged, economically distressed areas, and underrepresented communities in the watershed (https://sawpa.org/owow/dci-program/). This program, conducted under SAWPA's One Water One Watershed Program (https://sawpa.org/owow/), included a wide array of engagement and education activities intended to uncover and share the needs and capacities within the water agencies and communities. It was built upon the strong foundation of knowledge and outreach developed throughout earlier integrated regional water management planning efforts and encompassed three key program elements. Program Element 1 of the DCI program entailed surveying the strengths and needs of disadvantaged, economically distressed areas, and underserved communities in the watershed. This included a series of workshops conducted by SAWPA to engage with representatives from these communities to expand the reach of OWOW. Through these workshops representatives of these communities were provided the opportunity to contribute, through conversation and deliberation, to the planning, and research. A key component of this DCI program element entailed the development of a novel ethnographic approach to investigate and document the strengths and needs of disadvantaged, economically distressed areas, and underserved communities in the Santa Ana River Watershed. This ethnographic approach, unlike a traditional strength and needs assessment approach, was based upon consultation with the greater community throughout the process and recognized community members as local environmental experts. Through this approach SAWPA's program partners used network sampling methods to engage five social groups: elected officials, water agencies, mutual water companies, Native American communities, and other diverse local communities. These efforts combined in a total of 53 listening sessions, totaling 82 hours of conversation with members of the community speaking about their watershed experiences. The data collected during these listening sessions were then analyzed to identify key discussion themes and documented in the 'Santa Ana River Watershed Community Water Experiences and Ethnographic Strengths and Needs Assessment Report' (https://sawpa.org/owow/dci-program/strengths-and-needs/). Program Element 2 encompassed a broad number of engagement and education activities to share the information gathered through the strengths and needs assessment with local the water agencies and communities highlighted by the following: -Homelessness and water convening events to reveal synergies and develop new partnerships between those seeking to manage homelessness in the watershed and those engaged with water management. -Tribal consultation with California Native American Tribes within the Santa Ana River Watershed, as well as those with historical and/or cultural ties to the Watershed. -Trust the Tap campaign to assist in the development and implement a multilingual community outreach campaign to share the value and safety of tap water with communities in the watershed. -Translation services for inâ€person meetings and written material translation services on activities related to community engagement for water management. -Engagement best practices publication looking at engagement of DACs about water management, with case studies from around the state. - Community water education to provide community members opportunities to learn about the water management process and engage with local water managers in the watershed. - Water agency training for water agencies staff in the watershed and statewide summit to share the information. - Local elected leader training to share the findings of the DCI program, basic information on water management topics, and best practices for helping the communities to interact with water planning activities. Program Element 3 focused on project development building upon what was learned through the strengths and needs assessment to identify projects and programs that address the needs of disadvantaged, economically distressed areas, and underserved communities in the watershed. SAWPA, working in coordination with a Technical Assistance Committee composed of the DCI non-profit partners, were tasked to develop evaluation criteria for projects and programs to receive technical assistance funding, conduct a rating, ranking and scoring of the potential projects, plans and programs and allocate $2.9 M in available technical assistance funding to develop these projects and programs. The highest priority of this program element was to formulate solutions that addressed the critical needs of these communities that do not have safe, reliable, and affordable drinking water. Overall, the findings and conclusions of the SAWPA DCI program were based upon information gathered from the three program elements. Report findings were presented to individual social groups including elected officials, local communities, Native communities, water-agencies, and mutual water companies. Findings revealed the social, cultural, and water-related strengths and needs of these communities in the watershed. From these findings, the program partners were also able to identify several strong thematic connections and disconnections among and between the various social groups. These focused on four key themes: water management, water rates and cost, communication, and water quality and demonstrated how water systems are collectively understood-and misunderstood-by various social groups in the watershed and helped to explain why one participant group's strength may be another's need. Several core conclusions and recommendations reflect the key barriers and challenges to strengthening agency engagement with overburdened and underrepresented groups. Language Barriers One of the consistent needs that surfaced throughout the program implementation process was the need for water agencies to commit to bridging language barriers between their staff and the communities they serve. With such a diverse watershed population, it is necessary that water-related decision-makers work with local constituents to identify translation projects and offer translators for relevant public meetings. As part of the program, SAWPA offered on-call translation services to public agencies and nonprofits. This included providing translation consultants for live translation of public meetings and for translation of water-related documents. Communication One of the factors that limits agency, decision-maker, and community member connections is simply a lack of funding or staff time devoted to communications. This is a broad acknowledgement that resource providers can do a better job of ensuring that critical water information is accessible to various publics, especially those most vulnerable to water-related challenges. Community members say that they often do not know how to find answers to their water-related questions or that they are not sure how to interpret the information they do find. It is recommended that water decision-makers devote staff time to maintaining long-term relationships with community-based organizations that have relationships with underrepresented and overburdened communities to better understand localized communication preferences. Tap Water Quality The most critical disconnection surfaced in this report are the prevalent community concerns about tap water quality. Water agencies need to address these concerns differently than they have historically. Community concerns are not just linked to reasons previously assumed by water providers, such as immigrant-status or lack of education. The report indicated that more work is necessary to overcome the physical and social disconnections that may impair water quality between the facility and the faucet, especially in economically distressed areas. It is recommended that water agencies work directly with community-based organizations to hear and respond to the localized concerns that people have about tap water. Connecting Strengths and Needs to Technical Assistance Projects The ethnographic model of collecting strengths and needs is unfamiliar to most public planning agencies, both as an approach and as a dataset. The insights that can be gleaned from this approach are highly valuable but are also complex and difficult to interpret and implement. It is the responsibility of agencies to gather civic input (community experiences) and translate those themes into strategies to meet the needs that emerge. It is recommended that DCI program groups design strong and inclusive working group structures that can connect the strengths and needs surfaced by communities to actionable projects and programs.

This paper was presented at the WEF/AWWA Utility Management Conference, February 21-24, 2022.

SpeakerMosher, Jeff

Presentation time

16:30:00

17:00:00

Session time

15:30:00

17:00:00

SessionCommunications and Public Interest

Session number10

Session locationHyatt Regency Grand Cypress, Orlando, Florida

TopicCustomer Trust, Public Education/Information/Communication, Public engagement, Strategic Plan

Author(s)

J. MosherR. Whetsel

Author(s)J. Mosher1, R. Whetsel

Author affiliation(s)Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority 1; Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority 2; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

SourceProceedings of the Water Environment Federation

Document typeConference Paper

PublisherWater Environment Federation

Print publication date Feb 2022

DOI10.2175/193864718825158226

Volume / Issue

Content sourceUtility Management Conference

Word count10

Base text size -

Mosher, Jeff

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