 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Situation: Rural communities in the urbanizing Northeast must adopt strategies to allow them to grow, while retaining their agricultural base and community character and protecting their water and forest resources.
NESCI Response: The Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) NEMO is a longstanding Land Grant/Sea Grant collaboration that educates community decision makers on how land use decisions affect the health of natural resources. With support from the NIFA Water Program and through USDA/NOAA/EPA partnership, NEMO has spread from its original development at the University of Connecticut in 1991 to a National Network comprised of programs in 30 states.
Support as a Focus Area of the USDA/NIFA Northeast States and Caribbean Islands (NESCI) Regional Water Center resulted in the development of additional NEMO programs in the region, and enabled enhanced collaboration between existing programs. As of Fall 2010, there were NEMO programs in Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont with programs in development in New Jersey and Puerto Rico.
Northeast NEMO played a critical role in the adoption of Low Impact Development (LID) techniques in the region. NEMO organized statewide LID conferences in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut and Rhode Island, bringing together community leaders, researchers, regulators and private sector experts to discuss opportunities and barriers related to LID. For instance, CT NEMO, working with the CT Department of Environmental Protection, conducted LID workshops for planners, engineers and commissioners from towns within the Farmington River watershed, providing the basis for a series of implementation grants for LID projects.
Northeast NEMO collaborates with several NESCI focus areas to bridge gaps and achieve more results. NEMO worked with the award-winning NESCI Volunteer Monitoring programs to develop training and materials to improve the use of watershed assessment data by local decision-makers. NEMO and the Sustainable Landscaping group are close allies. For instance, “rain garden,” or bioretention, practices (an example LID practice) that use vegetation to help reduce and treat polluted runoff are of common interest to the groups. Rutgers and UConn, in collaboration with EPA Region One and state agencies, teamed up to train contractors on the construction of rain gardens, also creating opportunities to create “green jobs.”
NEMO programs have extensive expertise in geospatial technologies, such as geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS). Many programs both trained decision makers in the use of these technologies and developed easily accessed geospatial web tools. These tools enabled communities to map, evaluate and plan their local and watershed landscape. These tools leveraged NOAA and additional USDA support to train other NIFA programs and their partners at the National level. For example, CT NEMO is actively engaged with the University of Rhode Island and Arizona State University in an NIFA Integrated Project to develop and disseminate a watershed nitrogen decision support tool to NEMO programs in coastal watersheds.
On the Ground Results: Northeast NEMO’s work with communities has resulted in changes to local comprehensive, open space and watershed plans, zoning and subdivision regulations, and on the ground changes in development practices and open space protection. NEMO programs have been on the leading edge of LID adoption beyond their work with communities. For instance, NEMO programs have been critical in the development of statewide stormwater management standards and have spearheaded the installation of pervious parking lots and other stormwater solutions at the URI and UConn campuses. Northeast NEMO programs are nationally recognized leaders in the use of geospatial technology to support better land use planning and protection of agricultural, water and other natural resources.
