Coastal Services Center

Local elected and appointed officials often have little, if any, training in land use planning or natural resource protection, yet they are required to make decisions every day that determine not only how our nation's future landscape will look, but the quality of water and natural resources. A Connecticut education program is addressing nonpoint source pollution by improving local land use decisions, and is the model for a new national network.

"It is critical to educate the people who are deciding the fate of our national landscape," says Chet Arnold, codirector of the Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) project. "What we're trying to do is change public policy."

And since its creation in 1991, the NEMO project has been doing just that. Arnold says he and his staff of eight have worked with two-thirds of the state's 169 communities. He cites numerous examples of NEMO-inspired local initiatives, including zoning commissions addressing storm water runoff and improved site design; planning commissions adding water resource protection goals to development plans; conservation commissions initiating open space planning and natural resource inventories; and wetlands commissions requiring applicants to submit watershed maps. There also have been "spin-off" civic events, nonprofit activities, scientific research, and school projects.

The NEMO project was developed by the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System, in partnership with the Department of Natural Resources Management and Engineering, and the Connecticut Sea Grant Program. It has won national awards from the American Planning Association and the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation.

Arnold says what has made the project so successful is that NEMO is putting water quality into context with other community issues, such as suburban sprawl, traffic, road maintenance, subdivision design, open space planning, and the character of neighborhoods.

"We are very tightly focused on local land use decision makers and town-level commissioners," he explains. "We go to them. We present information in terms of their world. Water quality is not treated as a stand-alone issue divorced from other local considerations. By doing this, we avoid being the environmental flavor of the month."

The Role of Technology

Advanced technologies—geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and the Internet—and face-to-face training form the basis of NEMO's education programs. Arnold quickly points out that while the program "uses technology, it's not about technology."

"Digital data is a two-edged sword," he says. "The impressive multilayer maps you can make in GIS can be the new equivalent of the 200-page report that sits on a shelf and doesn't get used. We use technology sparingly, but effectively, to show the picture of a town or watershed that land use planners have never seen before.... It's a matter of taking fairly complex data and painting a simple picture for decision makers so that they can look at a proposed development within the context of their entire town, or even back one step further in the context of the entire watershed."

One of the project elements that makes NEMO different from other nonpoint programs, Arnold says, is using the amount of impervious surface coverage to estimate existing and future water quality conditions. "One of the critical points in the program's evolution was when we decided not to pursue loadings-based modeling," he explains. "Impervious cover is a simple and elegant, scientifically relevant indicator of population density and urbanization, and therefore is a good way to estimate their impact on water resources."

NEMO offers 13 different education programs that "fill in the different pigeonholes of natural resource planning," Arnold says. The basic educational presentation explains the links between land use, water quality, and community character. Follow-up presentations focus on planning processes, preservation priorities, and development. NEMO also offers communities related publications and Web-based services.

When doing a presentation, Arnold says they "try to insist" on having representatives from all the "different town commissions, boards, and decision-making bodies together to hear the message at the same time in the same room. This is one of the keys to seeing changes occur."

Going National

By 1995, NEMO's success in Connecticut had caught the attention of peers in other states. NEMO staff began holding workshops for other coastal resource management agencies, helping them adapt the NEMO model to their area's water resource issues. Since then, 19 states have developed NEMO programs, and a National NEMO Network has been established. Arnold says network members will be able to share information, education tools, and experience.

He notes a challenge with working with other states is that "even though the issues are similar, the particular natural resources of concern are often quite different. However, whether the focus is a lake, a salt marsh, or an entire watershed, the main unifying concept is that protecting these natural resources can be addressed by educating local land use decision makers."

To help guide this national network, representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have formed the National NEMO Network Interagency Workgroup. "Clientele" groups like the American Planning Association and the National Association of Counties also are members.

NEMO is investigating whether more accurate remotely sensed data can enable local officials to go beyond land use issues at the town and watershed levels to deal with the specific problem of sprawl patterns of growth. A new NASA Regional Earth Science Applications Center at the University of Connecticut is conducting research and developing tools that will help local officials access cutting-edge remote sensing information on the urbanizing Northeast landscape.

"I think through research and the evolution of our program we are creating a more sophisticated way for local land use decision makers to visualize alternatives for the future," Arnold says. "The key for agencies to reach their goals in addressing issues like smart growth, Phase II storm water management, and conserving biodiversity boils down to local land use. The way to work with local land use decision makers and help them do their incredibly important and difficult jobs is through education—but on their terms and within the context of the way they do business. NEMO is just one approach to doing that."

For more information about the NEMO project, point your browser to nemo.uconn.edu. For information on NEMO's creation, contact Chet Arnold at (860) 345-4511 or carnold@canr.uconn.edu. For information on adapting NEMO to your state, contact John Rozum at jrozum@canr.uconn.edu.