What is the Urban Waters Federal Partnership?
Here on the Anacostia Park and Community Collaborative (APACC) website, I write a monthly blog post about goings-on along the Anacostia River as part of my role as Ambassador to the Urban Waters Federal Partnership. Sometimes people ask me what being an “Ambassador” means, and what the Urban Waters Federal Partnership (UWP) is or does, so today I will spend my post helping to answer that question!
What is the Urban Waters Federal Partnership?
The UWP is a nationwide program, and there are “partnerships” in 20 different cities around the U.S. including the Anacostia River. Each of these partnerships looks different, but the overarching goal is to get Federal agencies to work alongside local government and community groups to do a better job at restoring urban rivers and promoting the social and economic benefits of restoration. Each location has an “Ambassador” who helps coordinate the partnership. You can read the official language on the Environmental Protection Agency’s website.
In some watersheds, the UWP serves as the primary vehicle to bring agencies together to improve their river. Some locations have long-term work plans that set restoration goals, and they meet quarterly to evaluate their progress. In the Anacostia watershed, we actually already have a partnership like that called the Anacostia Watershed Restoration Partnership (AWRP), which is led by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) and completely separate from the UWP, although many Federal and local agencies participate in both. We also have a District government body, the Mayor’s Leadership Council for a Cleaner Anacostia River, which also has many of the same government agency members. Then we have community coalitions like APACC.
Since there are so many partnerships and so many meetings already happening, the UWP has elected to avoid redundancy by not hosting quarterly meetings like other locations do, and instead help to coordinate and share information between each of these different partnerships working on the Anacostia River.
What does the UWP do?
Even though the Anacostia Watershed UWP does not host quarterly meetings, we do have occasional meetings and hope to host a watershed-wide conference or summit once the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided. We also share information between practitioners in the watershed through a monthly newsletter (you can sign up for the newsletter here), and we are working to launch projects that fill the gaps between all of the amazing work that partners are already doing in the watershed. For example, we are currently looking into what a “Paddleshare” program might look like on the Anacostia River.
How do I participate?
One way to participate in the UWP would be to join one of the many existing partnerships already working on restoring the Anacostia River:
The Anacostia Watershed Restoration Partnership has three different committees staffed by Federal, local, state agencies, nonprofits and community members. If you work for a government agency, you may be able to get involved in the Steering Committee or Management Committee, and if you are a community stakeholder you should certainly join the Community Advisory Committee.
If you are interested in the overlap between improving the river and equitably improving neighborhoods near the river in Ward 7 and Ward 8 in the District, then you may want to look into the Anacostia Park and Community Collaborative (where you are probably reading this blog post!).