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County Services News
Technical Assistance for Communities
What will communities need to manage environmental
challenges of the next century? How can community leaders tap into human
and technical resources to resolve increasingly complex issues?
As part of NACo's new Technical Assistance for Community-Based Environmental
Protection Project, 25 community representatives joined staff members from
three environmental organizations, NACo, EPA headquarters and EPA Region
III, at the new National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown,
W. Va., for a three-day introduction to tools and techniques for use in
local environmental management.
Held Oct. 2426, this training workshop served as the kick-off for
this one-year project that is funded by EPA's Office of Research and Development.
 Lawrence Martin (r), U.S. EPA Office of
Research and Development, looks on as Thomas Harris, county administrator,
North Hampton, Va., tries the online Green Communities Tool Kit. Photo by
Jamal Kadri
By working with nine pilot communities and three environmental service
provider organizations, NACo and EPA hope to assist the pilot communities
in resolving environmental problems while providing feedback to NACo and
EPA on the usefulness of various technical assistance tools. The project's
overall goal is to improve assistance to rural and smaller communities,
and increase their capacity to deal with complex and multi-disciplinary
problems.
Approximately half of the training was spent behind state-of-the-art
computer terminals surfing the Web and learning about technical assistance
tools available from EPA and others on the Internet. During the remainder
of the training, attendees learned about problem-solving skills such as
conflict resolution, visioning, and how to involve multiple stakeholders
in the planning process.
Resources presented at the training, available to anyone with access
to the Internet, included EPA's "Surf Your Watershed,"
"Index of Watershed Indicators," EPA's "Green
Communities Green Kit," and the "Toxics Release
Inventory (TRI) " data.
Kevin Coyle from Kent County, Del. and Dave Carter from the Delaware
Department of Environmental Resources and Environmental Control discussed
how to use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for local land-use planning.
Pilot communities include: Pilot communities for the Technical
Assistance for Community-Based Environmental Protection Project are
located in EPA Region III states. Many of these communities are defined
by watershed boundaries and may encompass more than one county. They include:
- Mill Run Watershed, Allegany County, Md.
- Spring Creek Watershed, Centre County, Pa.
- Mattaponi and Pamunkey Rivers Association, King and Queen County, Va.
- Octoraro Watershed, Lancaster and Chester counties, Pa.
- Town of Exmore, Northampton County, Va.
- Potomac Headwaters Resource Alliance, Hardy, Grant, Hampshire, Pendleton
and Mineral counties, W. Va.
- Jefferson County Watershed Coalition, W. Va.
- Lower Paint Creek Association, Kanawaha County, W. Va.
- Swatara Creek Watershed and Lebanon County, Pa.
Additional information about the progress of the nine communities will
be provided to NACo members in the future.
(County Services News was written by Naomi
Friedman, senior project manager.)
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