In the last few decades, the Western United States has experienced rapid population growth. This ballooning number of residents has placed a heavy burden on the water systems, especially in the arid Southwest, which gets limited rainfall and yet has one of the highest water consumption rates per capita in the country.  In addition to water shortages, this region also grapples with poor water quality. It is not enough to have sufficient quantities of water for drinking, irrigation, recreation, mining and manufacturing; the water must also be clean. The addition of pollutants and toxins into the water system, or even small changes to the temperature of the water, can harm the countless fish, animals, trees, and human beings that depend on these watersheds for their day-to-day existence.

Under the Clean Water Act, every state sets water quality standards for the waterways and watersheds in its territory, and then tests them on a regular basis to ensure that these standards are being met. Between 2003 and 2004, however, water quality monitoring in the State of New Mexico revealed significant contamination in three watershed systems: the Chama, Jemez, and Conejos.

Agricultural activities such as ranching and crop irrigation had significantly altered the Chama River. In the Conejos Watershed, grazing cattle, vegetation removal and destabilization along the riverbanks, had all contributed to increasing the river system’s water temperature. In the Jemez River, ranching, mining, wildfires, and recreational activities, such as camping and driving off-road vehicles close to riverbanks, had also resulted in a high level of contamination in the water.

The fact that no single source caused the contamination in any of the three watersheds meant there was no simple, direct way to restore water quality. The New Mexico Environment Department decided to ask the various stakeholders involved to jointly determine the optimum solution for improving water quality in their rivers. With little experience in facilitating collaborative efforts, the department asked for help from the Meridian Institute—a non-governmental organization experienced in working with multiple stakeholders in environmental management. The department granted Meridian two to three years to assess if there was a basis for collaboration in each watershed and, if there was, to gather the concerned stakeholders to discuss their common problem and offer solutions. Finally, the Meridian Institute was mandated to help these stakeholders develop a Watershed Restoration Action Strategy for their area, and facilitate the formation of local collaborative groups that would put this plan into action.

The Transition Framework as a Diagnostic Tool

The Meridian Institute facilitators made a conscious decision not to teach local community members about the Transition Framework because 1) The watershed groups were newly formed and intra-group trust was still very low; 2) The “change,” or need to do something about contamination in the watershed, had been imposed by the government rather than initiated by the group; 3) Not all group members agreed on whether or how urgently change was needed or what should be done; and 4) The group was already trying to absorb a large amount of new and highly technical information about water quality, so it wasn’t the best time to introduce additional concepts.

Instead, the facilitators used the Transition Framework internally, as a diagnostic tool to help themselves assess at what stage of Transitions the different members of the Watershed groups were in, and to better understand their needs and emotions. At the beginning of the project, they incorporated questions into their interviews to elicit information about where people were on the Transitions spectrum. What changes have you seen in the watershed since you lived here? What would you like the future of the watershed to look like ideally? How would you like to be involved? By listening to the language people used in answering these questions, Meridian was able to learn where they were in Transitions.

Throughout the project, the facilitators used the framework to attune themselves to what people were undergoing, potential roadblocks, and how to overcome these challenges. Finally, near the end of their involvement in the three watersheds, the Meridian facilitators used Transitions concepts one last time to identify the local leaders to whom they could handover responsibility and coordination of the groups. These leaders were identified based on how far they had moved along the Transitions curve into New Beginnings.

Transitions Among Stakeholders

The diagnostic value of the Transitions Framework became evident early on as Meridian used it to help probe for behaviors, perceptions, and attitudes that stakeholders might have to shed before engaging in a collaborative relationship with people that they did not trust.  Building trust in the facilitators and among the diverse stakeholders - from ranchers and private landowners, to recreational water users and Native American Tribal representatives, each of whom had different connections to the rivers – was a critical first step. Many shared a suspicion of outsiders. Others had had negative experiences with the state and federal government in the past and saw the Meridian Institute as their stooge and messenger.

With the Transitions Framework as its lens, Meridian recognized that it would need to help residents through their Endings phase.  From the start, Meridian acknowledged the full range of emotions and assured community members it was alright to feel wary. Time and again, they explained they were merely facilitators and would be involved in the area for a limited amount of time. They also stressed that community members’ participation in meetings and restoration efforts was completely voluntary. Meridian was not there to force anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do.

Rex Raimond, the Meridian mediator for the Conejos Watershed Group, had an additional strategy that was ultimately very successful in winning over skeptics. He invited members of the Cimarron Watershed Alliance, which Meridian had helped organize to address water quality issues in the Rio Cimarron area a few years earlier, to attend one of the Conejos meetings. Cimarron Alliance members described in their own words the change of heart they had experienced towards Meridian and the collaborative process.

“When we first got involved,” they told local residents of the Conejos Watershed, “we thought we were going to hear from a bunch of environmentalists that we were ruining the earth and should do everything differently. Now we see the benefit of all stakeholders in our community working together to develop projects that benefit us all.” By acknowledging and validating the fears of the Conejos River residents, Meridian helped the residents let go of some of their distrust of outside facilitators.   

This had a domino effect, as word spread that the collaborative approach could work. A member of the Conejos group, who also participated in the Rio Chama group, retold the Cimarron story at one of the Chama meetings. “Over time, the people who are buying into this collaborative approach become the advocates for the process,” Raimond explains. “They own it and this reduces the importance of our role…. It is eventually those community members who convince their skeptical peers.”

Meridian quickly realized that stakeholders were experiencing other losses related to changes that had happened long before their involvement.   Without addressing these larger changes and the emotions they had engendered, any collaborative efforts or technical solutions for improving water quality would be unsustainable.  In other words, the residents were running transition deficits;  they carried emotional baggage from changes that had happened to them in the past or were happening concurrently to them now that were impacting their response to the efforts to improve water quality.

To learn more about what these other changes were and how they were affecting the local communities, Meridian facilitators spent the initial assessment period having one-on-one conversations with many residents. Rex Raimond started by asking long-term residents what changes they had witnessed in the river and the area in their lifetime. Often his questions would lead to nostalgic stories. “There used to be beaver in the upper reaches of these rivers,” one man told him. “But they have all disappeared.”

Others described the changing social fabric of their rural neighborhoods. Young people were leaving in search of opportunities in the city. And well-off newcomers were buying land and building second homes along the river. “Neighbors used to really help each other out in the past, but we don’t anymore,” another resident told Raimond. “The community has changed.”

Still others held deep-seated distrust of government interventions based on years of discrimination. Spanish farmers settled along the Rio Chama hundreds of years ago—and well before New Mexico gained statehood in 1911. Their descendents have long had a contentious relationship with the U.S. government, which has over time appropriated large parcels of their land. Following decades of such encroachment, any suggestion that these families change traditional agricultural and ranching practices to prevent additional soil erosion could resurrect feelings of past abuse and pressure to give up their heritage.

Jennifer Pratt-Miles, the project manager for the Chama Watershed, helped ease the families through the Endings phase by listening to and documenting their histories, and organizing a public forum so they could be recounted in the open. This explicit acknowledgement of the full range of losses that people had or were experiencing helped residents feel that Meridian did value their history and relationship with the land.  Moreover, it allowed residents to recognize what perceptions, fears, and practices they needed to relinquish to face the new realities of their community.

Having effectively helped residents manage their Endings, Meridian witnessed residents reach the Neutral Zone, where they grew more committed to the collaborative process and explored new ways to ensure sustainable watersheds.

Guiding a Community through the Neutral Zone

One of the challenges of guiding large-scale community transitions is keeping people from losing interest or burning out along the way.  The long-term goal of changing a community’s practices can seem overwhelming and elusive.  Feeling as though the initiative is stuck or going in circles is symptomatic of the Neutral Zone.

To counteract such potential paralysis, Meridian facilitator, Raimond, introduced opportunities for small successes that could provide residents with a sense of consistent momentum.  Raimond organized residents to develop funding proposals. These short-term projects produced tangible results and helped galvanize government agencies and local farmers and ranchers to work together to develop joint proposals. As a result, in two short years, the Conejos Watershed Group produced an action plan for restoring their watershed, submitted and received funding for a proposal for a river restoration pilot project on the Los Pinos River, and began preparations for another proposal to support an improvement project on the San Antonio River.

Managing the Marathon Effect

As the projects gained momentum, some community members who had adopted a wait-and-see attitude, decided the collaborative approach could work, and decided to join midstream. While expanding the pool of participants could only enrich the collaborative process, it also created a problem.

The different stakeholders found themselves at different stages of commitment and understanding and in different phases along the Transitions spectrum.  Most who had been involved since the beginning had managed their Endings, and were well into the Neutral Zone and/or New Beginning phase as they explored alternative ways to preserve watersheds. Some of the newcomers – who had not processed their losses – were asking questions and raising issues that had already been discussed. The introduction of the new participants had created a Marathon Effect, with longer-serving members at the front of the pack and newcomers trailing behind.

Facilitators had to grapple with the need to smoothly integrate newcomers into the existing processes without starting from scratch each time. To do this, facilitators kept on hand all the background material from past meetings and enlisted longer-serving members to be responsible for educating newcomers and helping manage the transition phase in which each was at.

The Jemez Watershed group recruited a team of high school students and their teacher from Jemez Valley High School to build a Web site for the group (www.jemezwatershedgroup.org), complete with photographic evidence taken by the students of the state of the river. This Web site serves as an electronic library of the watershed group’s meeting minutes, materials and reports. With this electronic orientation, newcomers can engage in the collaborative process more quickly, and start contributing their ideas and energy faster as well.

Measuring Success

In addition to the objectives laid out by the New Mexico Environment Department for the three watershed communities, Meridian’s facilitators developed three goals, which they mapped onto the three stages of the Transition Framework:

• Endings: A recognition of how their lifestyles were impacting the long-term viability of each watershed and, if necessary, letting go of familiar practices – social or otherwise – that were not sustainable;
• Neutral Zone: The identification within the community of ways to contribute to the sustainability of the watershed, and openness to exploring various options;
• New Beginnings: A commitment within the collaborative group to building healthy watersheds and healthy communities and to actively adopting and applying the sustainable watershed practices they agreed on as a group. 

By the end of Meridian’s term, the three project managers had begun to see some signs of a New Beginning in each of their watershed groups.

At a meeting for one of the sub-watershed groups from the Chama River, local participants raised and discussed ideas for three different projects to improve water quality, enhance the local habitat for wildlife, and improve the health of the forests. There were immediate volunteers for the position of project leader, and additional partners and sponsors were also quickly identified. The group members also signed a Memorandum of Understanding that provided a framework for how they would work together to improve water quality when Meridian was no longer there. For the first time, participants were openly talking about how to independently continue the watershed improvement process in the future.

The Jemez Watershed Group decided to continue working together as well. A state government official volunteered to be the group coordinator. She and other members rotate duties, such as designing agendas and facilitating meetings. Another collaborative group, focused on water shortage issues, has recently formed in the area and there is talk of the two groups combining efforts to maximize their resource base.

In Conejos, the individual funding projects continue to be the driving force behind people’s involvement. In 2007, a local landowner and his neighbors began working on another proposal to expand their pilot restoration project on the Los Pinos River to a three-mile stretch that will involve additional landowners. As Rex put it, “It’s really great to hear that our initial effort has resulted in ongoing work and a capacity within the community to keep this going and work together to overcome some of the challenges they faced.”