NEVERSINK WATERSHED, NY — When best practices are followed, environmental protection involves a lot of collaboration, especially with the people who live in and care about the lands and water being protected.

A group of community stakeholders kicked off a collaborative process for protecting the Neversink River watershed with a public meeting on January 19.

Sullivan County’s planning department, local advocacy organization the Friends of the Upper Delaware River (FUDR) and national advocacy organization Trout Unlimited (TU) are partnering to create a Neversink Watershed Management Plan (NWMP), with a planning process to occur throughout 2023.

Why the NWMP?

A watershed management plan helps local stakeholders understand how the watershed works. Its advice can help planning boards, nonprofits and businesses to ensure their decisions won’t harm the watershed, and to stay informed about the potential impact the watershed could have on their operations.

Water supports industry and agriculture, provides recreational resources and regulates the land through erosion, flooding and more, explained George Schuler, director of the Nature Conservancy. It also can affect the people who live near it. “ not in a predictable channel, it moves… the lower Neversink, where all those farms are, that isn’t a current floodplain, but that was a historic and ancient floodplain.”

Water doesn’t care about lotlines, or town and county borders, said Heather Jacksy, chief planner with Sullivan County’s planning division. The choices of one property’s development can affect the way water flows to its neighbors; small incremental changes can build up, and have a major downstream impact.

A map of the Neversink River, created based on USGS data.

“A watershed plan helps us understand these conditions regionally, with on-the-ground information, with science, best management practices… and community input; the plan presents goals to address problems, prevent conflicts and avoid adverse financial impacts,” said Jacksy.

What’s the process?

The kickoff meeting began a period of public outreach, but the NWMP has been a long time coming.

Advocacy for the plan has been underway for about 10 years, said Steve Schwartz, a local planning consultant. A number of smaller-scale studies of the Neversink Watershed have been done in that time, and last summer a team of interns gathered data for modeling from over a thousand culverts.

The process will bring those preexisting studies together with public input. Virtual public meetings in the spring will inform the public about watersheds and their protection. In-person meetings later in the year will ask the public to envision the future of the watershed, and will intake public sentiment for incorporation in the plan.

Meetings in the fall will discuss the NWMP after it is drafted, giving space for a final burst of public input.

How will the watershed be protected?

The final output and recommendations of the plan will very much depend on what the public wants to see.

The plan may recommend changes to local zoning regulations, though the plan itself can only advise, not regulate. Capital projects that physically improve the watershed are also provided for in the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant that’s funding the project, said Freda Eisenberg, commissioner of the Sullivan County planning department.  

Presenters at the meeting floated also the idea of a regional council to implement the protection measures of the plan. The creation of the plan will include discussion about “facilitating the establishment of a Neversink Watershed Association to lead the implementation of the NWMP after the planning period is over,” reads a summary on the project’s website.

“We’re really glad that you’re all here tonight, but please share stuff, and come out to all of our future events and make sure that your thoughts and ideas are heard,” said Jacksy.

For more information, visit fudr.org/neversinkwmp, or contact the Sullivan County planning department at planning@sullivanny.us or at 845/807-0527.