With the recent passage and imminent implementation of the Safe, Clean, Water Program (Measure W) and Safe, Clean Neighborhood Parks Program (Measure A), the County will invest millions of dollars in stormwater infrastructure and park projects that are intended to benefit underserved communities and the health of our watersheds. Throughout the region, there are many community-based organizations (CBOs), small municipalities, tribes, and school districts eager to initiate projects that can leverage funding across these local County measures, State grants, and private philanthropy. However, several of these entities lack capacity or knowledge about solutions and best practices for climate resiliency, water supply, and urban forest planning. While many understand current and future impacts of climate change, alone they often struggle to be able to identify site-specific climate-adaptive design responses that ensure community resiliency. Often, nature-based solutions go unidentified and project resiliency is an afterthought. 

 

Over the past eight years, Water Foundation, ARLA, CWH and our program partners (ie. the cohort) established successful processes of providing technical assistance (TA) and building the capacity of small municipalities, tribes, school districts, and local CBOs to develop and implement multi-benefit projects that integrate stormwater capture and climate resiliency. The cohort has identified and developed multiple competitive grant applications that resulted in project implementation funding on four different sites. This website is meant to be an ongoing resource of useful frameworks, toolkits, case studies, event and funding tracking, and "lessons-learned" across their work. We hope that this ongoing compilation of information will benefit watershed coordinators, project managers, community leaders, and others when developing nature-based solutions for their own communities.