Watershed management is a comprehensive approach to managing and protecting Great Miami River Watershed's natural resources—such as rivers, streams, aquifers, and surrounding lands—to promote long-term sustainability, health, and resilience. It involves coordinating actions to balance the needs of communities, agriculture, industry, and wildlife within the watershed, focusing on preserving water quality, ensuring flood protection, supporting biodiversity, and encouraging sustainable land use practices.
This approach includes community engagement, education, and policy-making to foster a shared responsibility for water, thereby safeguarding both the environment and human communities that rely on these resources for health, recreation, and economic prosperity.
For the Miami Conservancy District, watershed management is critical to mitigating flood risk through infrastructure like dams and levees and increasing public awareness, fostering stewardship, and promoting recreation. These efforts help communities remain resilient, connected to their water resources, and active stewards of their environment.
Below are examples of recent MCD projects that improve land use plans, reduce nutrient runoff, and demonstrate low impact development.
Site Planning Roundtable
Thoughtful community land use planning and development are critical to protecting water. MCD assists communities like Springfield, Ohio, in integrating water protection into their land use plans, zoning codes and subdivision regulations. Springfield hosted a Site Planning Roundtable, bringing together key stakeholders that represent local government, development and natural resources. MCD guided the stakeholders through a consensus process with the goal of agreeing on the development rules best suited to balancing water protection and economic development. The updated development rules reduce the amount of impervious cover, increased natural lands set aside for conservation and used pervious areas for more effective stormwater treatment. In addition, the City of Springfield created several wetlands to naturally treat stormwater runoff.
MCD in partnership with local sponsors can provide resources and assist communities during all phases of a Site Planning Roundtable.
The Miami Conservancy District supported the Preble County Soil and Water Conservation District to develop a conservation planning framework. This framework is a tool that combines high-resolution terrain, drainage, soils, land use, and cropland data to determine potential locations for best management practices atht he field scale, and helps engage farming communities in watershed conservation efforts.
The Miami Conservancy District provided technical assistance to the Little Miami River Watershed Network by participating on steering committees, conducting watershed tours, and identifying shovel-ready projects that will help reduce causes of water quality impairment.
Projects that reduce nutrient and sediment impairment
MCD collaborated with federal, state, and local partners to design and implement a market-based program that reduces nutrients in streams and rivers as an alternative to traditional regulatory strategies. The success of the program has drawn international attention. Water quality credit trading is an innovative approach to invest dollars in voluntary agricultural practices, which are more cost-effective and provide broader environmental benefits, than technology upgrades at wastewater treatment plants.
As of December 2015, 467 agricultural projects generated more than 1.14 million credits over the life of the projects. More than 1.76 million dollars were paid to agricultural producers for these credits. This translates to a 626 ton reduction in nutrient discharges to rivers and streams and other benefits including more sustainable farming operations and an array of ancillary environmental benefits.
This performance-based cost share program offers voluntary financial incentives to farmers to use best management practices to reduce nutrient runoff from farmland. The Ohio State University, Stillwater Watershed Project and the Natural Resources Conservation Service partnered on this project. Payments were dependent on measurable achievement of water quality improvements.
An innovative two-stage ditch was constructed to demonstrate its ability to decrease sediment and nutrient transport, improve drainage and ecological function, increase ditch stability and reduce maintenance requirements. Along with MCD, The Ohio State University and the Loramie Valley Alliance partnered on this project.
The Miami Conservancy District built several projects that protect water resources. These projects are guided by three principles: broad stakeholder involvement, environmental results, and market incentives. MCD partnered with local communities, universities, and nonprofit organizations to implement projects in the Great Miami River Watershed. These projects demonstrate that low impact development practices are effective in the Miami Valley. Local projects include the following practices:
