Creating a Countywide Action Plan to improve water quality will provide significant benefit, but it will also require significant effort.  You’ll need to analyze a great deal of data and coordinate extensively with stakeholders in your community to obtain cooperation and support. Your existing staff probably does not have the time they need to allocate to this task without other initiatives suffering.  Thankfully, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is providing you with money you can use to hire someone to manage this effort.  Should you hire someone in-house as a full-time staff person? Or should you hire an outside consultant?  Let’s look at the qualities you should seek when selecting a Phase 3 WIP coordinator:

This is a statewide initiative, yes, but you’ll be addressing local water quality.  You’ll also need to work with area farmers, homeowners, businesses, and municipal leaders to make this program effective. You need someone who knows the area and its unique issues. You also need someone who knows the people in your community. They’ll be able to bring stakeholders to the table, build consensus, and craft a program that meets the needs of everyone your county represents.

You might think this requirement disqualifies an outside consultant; you may think only someone who lives in the area or has worked on your staff will truly know the local community.  It’s important to keep an open mind though.  Look to see if the consultant has local ties to the area: Have they completed other work nearby?  Are they involved with local organizations?  Do they have existing relationships with area stakeholders? Evaluate their approach: Do they implement standardized solutions, or do they truly integrate with county staff and collaborate on localized solutions?

Whether you hire someone in-house or an external consultant, you’ll want to make sure your WIP coordinator truly understands the agricultural community because farmers will play a major role in meeting the program goals. Look for someone who has experience working with farmers – or better yet, someone who has farming experience themselves.

The role of a WIP coordinator is very focused on relationship building, but it also requires a high level of technical understanding. A broad range of issues impact water quality: Agriculture plays a role, as does wastewater treatment and stormwater.  In many communities, acid mine drainage is a significant driver of local water quality concerns. Your WIP coordinator will need to know about all of these issues and will need to understand how they interact. They’ll need to understand complex data and analysis about water quality, pollutant levels, and pollutant sources.  They’ll also need to evaluate the effectiveness (and appropriateness) of various Best Management Practices (BMPs).  In addition, they’ll need to understand the fine details of the Phase 3 WIP Program and how it fits into DEP’s larger Chesapeake Bay initiatives, too.

Look for someone who has knowledge and experience in all of these areas: Someone who has worked with the agricultural community on water quality. Someone who has experience with wastewater treatment, Total Maximum Daily Loads, Pollutant Reduction Plans, and MS4 permitting. Someone who has completed DEP’s WIP coordinator training and has experience helping other counties coordinate their Countywide Action Plans.

Your Countywide Action Plan will require cooperation from a diverse group of stakeholders during implementation: Farmers, municipal leaders, water quality organizations, universities, residents, and business owners will all play a part in the program’s success. You’ll want to hire a coordinator who has relationships with these people in your community.  You’ll also want them to have a strong relationship with (and the respect of) DEP.  DEP will ultimately have to approve the plan, and they can potentially be a significant source of additional funding beyond the allocation for the Countywide Action Plan.  They may provide other grants and loans for specific projects in the implementation plan through programs like Growing Greener, so you’ll want a coordinator who can work well with their staff.

Relationships are an important prerequisite, but look beyond that to see if your coordinator candidate has demonstrated experience forming successful partnerships.  Creating an arrangement that benefits and protects all parties is not easy.  Your coordinator will need to show stakeholders the benefit they will receive from participating, and they’ll need to come up with an approach that fairly allocates the cost and obligations according to that benefit.  They’ll need to understand how legal arrangements like intergovernmental contracts can be structured to benefit all participants. They’ll also need to have a creative eye that can see partnership possibilities others might miss.

The Countywide Action Plan is just the beginning.  The real benefits come from implementation, so you need a coordinator who can create a truly implementable plan.  Their approach should emphasize collaboration and coordination with stakeholders from the very beginning, so that the people who will execute the plan were involved in designing it.  We all know that if someone helped develop a plan, they will be more invested in making it work.

But that plan must contain practical solutions, and your coordinator must develop the plan with an approach for implementation baked in.  Their approach should focus on identifying who will be responsible for executing each idea, what the timeline is for each step, and how each measure will be funded.

This last item is particularly important because, at the end of the day, even the best laid plans go nowhere if there isn’t sufficient funding to get them off the ground. You need a coordinator who understands how to get projects funded. Someone who has knowledge of all available grant and loan programs and an understanding of how to position applications for success.  Someone who has expertise in capital planning, budgeting, and financing strategies.  Someone who understands how to structure municipal authorities and stormwater fee programs.  Over the past several years, stormwater fees have played an increasing role in funding water quality improvements in many communities, and they may be a valuable tool for implementing your Countywide Action Plan.  You’ll want a coordinator who can properly evaluate whether they could be right for your county and can design one that meets the very unique needs of member communities.

Selecting the right WIP coordinator can make or break the success of your program.  They will be responsible for bringing people together, identifying the best solutions for your community, and ensuring those solutions are fully implemented.  You need someone with broad knowledge and a wide range of skills to play that role. Someone who knows the local watershed and knows the people who live and work in the area.  Someone with the technical ability to analyze complex data and engineer solutions, combined with the people skills needed to build consensus and negotiate cooperative solutions. Most importantly, you need someone who is organized and can manage people, resources, and schedules to get projects accomplished and produce real-world results.

HRG is a recognized leader in water quality with multi-disciplinary capabilities and vast experience working with municipal and county leaders, state agencies, businesses, universities, non-profits, and residents to get projects accomplished. We have created innovative (and award-winning) partnerships that benefit the community and satisfy the needs of each party. We have training and demonstrated experience with the Phase 3 WIP program, and our approach is to work side-by-side with your team to create a truly implementable plan tailored to your stakeholders’ unique needs. Fill out the form below to request more information about countywide action plans or HRG’s ability to help: