WATERSHED PLANNING GUIDE FOR ILLINOIS 

Download a pdf version of the Watershed Planning Guide for Illinois   (click here).

Illinoisans, much like other Americans, face many challenging social problems that typically have environmental consequences. Today’s problems are often subtle, chronic, and inter-related. This is particularly evident in the area of water resources. Nonpoint-source pollution, for example, is the most
vexing water-quality problem that faces America today.  In Illinois, as elsewhere, agricultural and urban land uses are the largest nonpoint-source contributors to water resource impairment.

While a more regulatory or “top-down“ approach has worked well in dealing with point-source pollution,
a more flexible and collaborative or “bottom-up“ approach is necessary for addressing the ongoing nonpoint-source threat. A watershed approach features those attributes and offers a coordinating framework for practicing collaborative governance and sustainable management of water resources. Other 21st century issues of growing importance including availability of safe drinking water, ground water overdraft and depletion, and maintenance of abundant water supplies, demand a more comprehensive approach to environmental protection, as well as an approach grounded in sound science, innovative solutions, and broad public involvement. These attributes describe the watershed approach too.

Embracing these ideas, this manual presents an approach to watershed-based planning designed to ensure that local stakeholders play a central role in the development of comprehensive, multi-issue watershed plans. A watershed approach to planning for and managing land and water resources is not a new idea. Explorer and civil-war veteran, John Wesley Powell, called for a water and watershed approach to organizing settlements in the arid West during the latter part of the 19th century. Only now has the wisdom of Powell’s vision become fully appreciated. More recently, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) reaffirmed their commitment to supporting a watershed approach to environmentalresource Protection.  The USEPA argues that groups working within the watershed-based approach can identify and implement successful strategies to maintain and restore the chemical, physical and biological integrity of our nation’s waters.

Closer to home, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources are committed to a similar watershed approach to protecting, enhancing, and restoring state water resources. By focusing on multi-stakeholder efforts within hydrologically defined boundaries to protect and restore our aquatic resources, watershed planning offers a promising approach to manage today’s challenges.  Watershed planning efforts have evolved considerably over the last couple decades. Previously, such efforts were often top-down processes that focused primarily on single issues. More recently, local groups variously described as “place-based“ or “community-led“ planning initiatives have assumed a larger role in watershed planning and management. At the same time, the importance of comprehensive planning, rather than a single-issue focus, has also been recognized.  This manual embraces this evolution in watershed planning and seeks to provide an up-to-date approach to guide locally-driven, comprehensive watershed planning efforts in Illinois.

The USEPA has incorporated the watershed-based approach into many of its major programs—most Importantly are regulations regarding eligibility for certain types of Clean Water Act, Section 319 funding. The Section 319 program represents the USEPA’s primary nonpoint-source water-pollutioncontrol program. The USEPA requires nine components of a watershed-based plan. This manual addresses each component and explains how you can ensure that your planning efforts meet these requirements. Meeting these requirements will help ensure that when work towards plan implementation begins, funding support can be found under the Section 319 program.

This Guidance for Developing Watershed Action Plans in Illinois (referred to as The Illinois Guide thereafter) aims to help the reader create and develop an effective watershed-planning initiative that will produce a locally driven watershed action plan. The Illinois Guide features seven chapters. Each chapter represents a step in the strategy for conducting a watershed planning process.  The Illinois Guide is written so as to be useable by anyone interested in the watershed planning process.