Lackawanna River Conservation Plan - 10. Watershed Management and Program Administration

10. Watershed Management and Program Administration

The implementation of public policy and programs, the management and use of land and water resources by the private sector and the behavior and practices of the public as both individuals, property owners and economic players are some of the major variables affecting the human interactions with this watershed and its resources.

At the beginning of the 21^st Century, Pennsylvania is just beginning to assess its natural resources and begin to develop resource management polices based on watersheds and the natural values and functions inherent to watersheds.

Since 1987, the Lackawanna River Corridor Association has been a regional leader in the concept of watershed planning and management. The LRCA developed through a partnership among local citizen interests, county government, state and federal interests. The Citizens Master Plan was developed as a comprehensive and multi objective document. It wove together the many different issues and stakeholders and it offered a systematic series of recommendations all based on the watershed and all relevant today.

The Citizens Master Plan for the Lackawanna River of 1990 has four basic features:

· Project River Clean, a comprehensive environmental cleanup plan.

· Lackawanna River Park system, a linkage of neighborhood parks, rails-to-trails projects, trails on river levees and public roadways to create a continuous park land system from the confluence of the Lackawanna and Susquehanna rivers at Pittston, upstream through Scranton and Carbondale to the headwaters at Stillwater Dam.

· A Community Planning and Development project was proposed as a strategy to enhance the rivers recovery and provide for long-term redevelopment of neighborhoods adjacent to the river.

· A Lackawanna River Partnership was recommended as a coordinating body formed under the leadership of Lackawanna County. The partnership would facilitate implementation of the other elements of the plan.

10.1 Management Program Assessment

Since 1990 all of these elements have been implemented in some way. Significant advances have occurred in addressing river corridor and watershed issues identified in the CMP of 1990.

· Project River Clean has been implemented in various ways, such as local trash and debris cleanups conducted by the LRCA, community groups and volunteers, Lackawanna Watershed 2000, a $30-milliion federal-funded cleanup of abandoned mine land drainage problems and sewer upgrades is underway with over $28-million in nonfederal funds. Additional reclamation work is underway along the river and tributary streams through state funded Growing Greener projects.

· The Lackawanna River Heritage Trail is being developed by Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority between Scranton and Carbondale, and the Rail Trail Council of Northeast Pennsylvania (NEPA RTC) between Carbondale and the Lackawanna River headwaters north of Stillwater Dam and Union Dale. The LRCA is working in various ways to support these projects.

· There has not been a watershed-wide coordinated program for municipal ordinance upgrades. The Lackawanna Industrial Highway Corridor program has developed upgrades to ordinances and plans between Dunmore and Carbondale. The interest and ability of the municipalities to utilize the new ordinances to protect open space, natural areas, wetlands and stream corridors has not yet been demonstrated. An open space plan presently being initiated by Lackawanna and Luzerne counties may provide the framework for a comprehensive resource management program.

· The Lackawanna River Partnership suggested in the 1990 CMP has not been formally convened by the Lackawanna County Commissioners. Several related public-private partnership initiatives have evolved around different aspects of program implementation for cultural heritage, recreation and greenways and environmental resources. LRCA proposed a Lackawanna River Partnership model in 1996 which would bring water resource management, infrastructure and reclamation agencies together through a partnership under the county planning commission. The partnership could be organized similarly to the transportation planning model whereby the planning commission acting as a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) would bring partners and stakeholder groups together to identify and priority water resource management, conservation, and reclamation needs and coordinate the implementation and integration of programs and projects on a watershed basis.

10.2 Unmet Needs and Growth Issues

The Watershed 2000 program is addressing some but not all aspects of watershed planning and management needs. Watershed 2000 may have the ability to become institutionalized as a management system with defined partnership commitments and roles.

A closer integration of management on watershed resource issues could also be achieved through creation of a watershed-based storm water management utility. Such an agency could have responsibilities for storm drainage infrastructure as well as for the management of natural water resources, stream corridors, flood control works and reclamation areas. Storm water utility districts have been developed in some metropolitan areas and have succeeded in relieving municipalities of certain public works responsibilities while achieving economies of scale to better manage resources on a watershed level.

The open space management issues in the watershed may be seen as one aspect of public water supply security. The protection of source waters for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area has been and remains an important priority. The means of that protection is both a physical and institutional challenge. Do Lackawanna watershed municipalities have the capacity to absorb increases in the population in critical watershed areas? What are the alternatives to incremental sprawl-type growth? What impacts will the restoration of commuter rail service on the Scranton/New York rail corridor have on the North Pocono watersheds of the Lackawanna Basin?

Are there opportunities to encourage, direct and manage demographic change and economic development with conservation development strategies like transit/rail commuter line oriented design and neo-traditional village/town development? Will the Luzerne and Lackawanna county open space plans result in mechanisms which actually lead to the permanent conservation of a linked system of open space and natural areas tied into water resource protection and conservation?

These are just a few of the questions which watershed stakeholders in the Lackawanna Basin may wish to consider in the formulation of management and administrative initiatives to address the challenges to this watershed anticipated as we begin this new century.

The creation of the water supply system between the 1880’s and 1920’s helped to protect and conserve as significant amount of watershed resources during the past one-hundred-years. The variables for the next one-hundred-years are drastically more interactive and due to our technological capacities, poor decision-making may impact a wider array of undesirable consequences.

Thoughtful, deliberative, informal, consensus-based decision-making, focused on goals of long-term sustainability has contributed to successful community building elsewhere. During the past it has been successful here as well on a variety of singular or focused topics. Perhaps our challenge now is to insure we can combine the practice of consensus-based decision-making with the values of environmental and economic sustainability.