Renew America Success Stories

Groundwater Guardian

Description

The Groundwater Guardian program, a project of the Groundwater Foundation, helps communities promote knowledge about groundwater issues and institute local groundwater protection plans. Interested communities apply to the Foundation and form local and broad-based Groundwater Guardian Teams that establish specific goals for groundwater protection. The activities of each community are reviewed annually by a national board of experts, and upon approval, eligible communities earn the right to be called Groundwater Guardians.

Although recyclable, water is not renewable. For thousands of years the Earth's supply of water has been used and reused by successive generations, but the supply of usable water may be dwindling as it is becoming more and more polluted. Groundwater, a resource most people never encounter at its source, has been especially vulnerable to damage and is critical to our health and livelihood. Groundwater supplies 50% of America's drinking water, 90% of rural America's drinking water, 25% of the water used for industry and mining and 35% of the water used for agricultural irrigation. The Groundwater Foundation in 1994 founded the Groundwater Guardian program to begin helping local communities make decisions that will help them preserve this valuable resource now and into the future.

The program works because the Groundwater Foundation requires that participating communities create broad-based Groundwater Guardian Teams. By ensuring that many perspectives are represented, local groundwater preservation efforts are more likely to enjoy vigorous and lasting support. The activities that each community engages in are unique. Although almost all activities involve pollution prevention, the water issues facing one community may be different from those faced by another. In some communities, Teams have focused on capping abandoned wells to prevent the introduction of contaminants while other communities have organized paint exchanges.

Program Highlights

Program Details

• Each participating community forms a Groundwater Guardian Team. The Team generally includes members from citizen organizations, local businesses, agricultural interests, and representatives from local schools and government. The Team is responsible for developing local goals, objectives and long-term plans for protecting groundwater locally.
• Each participating community receives a "Groundwater Guardian Assistance Kit," which the Team uses to help develop their groundwater protection plan.
• The local teams then design "Result-Oriented Activities (ROAs)," which are designed to achieve the protection set by the local Team in conjunction with the Groundwater Foundation.
• Upon submission, review (by a panel of national experts) and approval of an annual report, the community is awarded its Groundwater Guardian designation, which entitles the community to use the shield logo on community materials.

The Groundwater Guardian program offers guidance to participating communities regarding implementing groundwater protection activities. Some the result-oriented activities suggested include:

• Organizing a Groundwater Festival
• Conducting a water resource survey
• Distributing educational materials on groundwater issues
• Endorsing water-saving devices
• Encouraging lower-impact lawn care and gardening practices
• Plugging abandoned wells
• Fixing leaking storage tanks

Vital Statistics

• Program Management/Partnerships: Groundwater Guardian is a project of the Groundwater Foundation in partnership with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, the American Water Works Association, the Water Environment Federation, the Water Education Foundation, University of Nebraska Water Center and DowElanco.
  
  
• Budget: $150,000 annually in 1995.
  
  
• Community Served: The residents of all communities that rely on safe groundwater for drinking, industry and agriculture. Participating communities have populations ranging in size from 2,000 to one million.
  
  
• Measures of Success:

• The number of Groundwater Guardian communities increased from eight in 1994 to 55 communities by 1995.
• More than 83,000 U.S. residents were served by various local Groundwater Guardian communities during the first six months of 1995.
• Communities from more than 28 states and two Canadian provinces have developed groundwater protection plans with the assistance of the Groundwater Guardian program.
• In 1996, ninety-eight communities entered the program and 84 were designated as Groundwater Guardians.

 

 Published: May 1997

Success stories designed by Mark W. Nowak

Back to Top