SuAsCo Watershed Community Council

CONTACT:

118 Great Road, Suite 200
Stow, MA 01775
978-461-0735
www.suasco.org

Nancy A. Bryant, Executive Director

DESCRIPTION:

Founded in 1998 (inc. 2001), by five environmental organizations—Sudbury Valley Trustees (Cat’99), Organization for the Assabet River (Cat’01), Hop Brook Protection Association, Framingham Advocates for the Sudbury River, and the SuAsCo Watershed Association—and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. Their purpose is to “promote blue waters and a green economy” in the Sudbury-Assabet-Concord River Watershed, reaching more people and institutions together than they could separately, through collaboration and partnership rather than separate advocacy. Their Steering Committee is the device that promotes collaboration—it convenes 13 representatives from each critical constituency (business, municipal, state/federal/regional, and philanthropic advocacy)—who have met 60 times in ten-years, and sponsored annual “River Vision Forums” assessing the “State of the Watershed”. They adopted a 5-Year Watershed Action Plan, which identifies critical natural resource problems, proposes solutions, and charts courses of action for meeting goals (which sometimes takes more than five years). Objectives are: natural resource protection; water quality and flow restoration; land use and water resource planning across community boundaries; stewardship of recreational and historic values; cooperation among divergent groups; education on watershed assets, challenges and opportunities; and mobilizing financial and technical assistance for problem-solving.

(2008: NATURE: Environment: Water)