Red Lake/EPA Project to Evaluate and Strengthen Stream Monitoring and Management in the Red Lake Watershed
The EPA Organon is a collaborative framework for resilience planning that is being used in partnership with scientists of the Red Lake Nation to evaluate and strengthen stream monitoring and management programs in the Red Lake Watershed. Objectives are to improve coordination of program components to achieve goals as well as identify strengths and needs for improving future work. Red Lake is evaluating how monitoring data and other information are being used to inform decision making and management activities to ask, "can any steps in the Organon cycle, or connections between steps in the cycle, be performed better and more efficiently?" End products include a strategic evaluation report with an overview/inventory of major program elements followed by a detailed synopsis of Red Lake’s stream monitoring and management components using the seven steps of the Organon. Each section has questions that Red Lake will revisit on a regular basis to help better adapt to changing conditions and priorities and get the most out of limited resources. A longer, more detailed version of the report and collaboration plan are also available. These can provide ideas and a possible template for other stream programs (state or Tribal) who are complying with the Clean Water Act. A similar exercise could be done for other waterbodies beyond streams alone.