Regional or watershed planning is in theory a great idea. In North Carolina I have been intimately involved with the state’s watershed planning as mandated by the Clean Water Act. Ion North Carolina the watersheds are broken into the 13 NC major river basins. For each basin the North Carolina Department of Water quality completes a process much like Randolph describes in the text. The process usually takes 2 years and has opportunities for stakeholder input and technical analysis.
Some potential pitfalls to the way North Carolina goes about the mandated watershed planning is the protocol it uses for the technical work. Specifically stream sampled and tested are only sampled and tested once during the 2 year process. This protocol does not allow for a mean that would account for fluctuations based on climatic or other factors. The results are then published, but cannot be heavily relied upon for accurate assessments of streams. These same protocols are used to determine 303d impaired status. In Watauga County the only 303d stream is????????????? Not kraut creek, not Winkler’s creek, or some urban stream….., but Beaver dam Creek in The bethel Community. I was present at the technical survey and questioned the monitoring staff about the findings once the 303d list was announced. I discovered that beaver dam creek was considered impaired for the lack of trout that turned up in one survey in August.