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Environmental Stewardship Action Plan
"We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging
to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin
to use it with love and respect."
Aldo Leopold
The Environmental Stewardship Action Plan should strive to preserve environmental resources and improve resources which have been degraded. Ideally the community and economic development should work in harmony with the environmental resources of the community. Click here for Environmental Stewardship Action Plan Indicators and Linkages
Goals and Objectives
Goals
Protect the physical environment and enhance the character, quality and livability of the community by preserving the natural environment as an integral part of the development process.
Restore and improve natural resources
Objectives
- Identify natural and man-made features that have a significant influence on the environmental and aesthetic quality of the community.
- Provide open space within the community.
- Create a system of greenways and trails to link living areas, schools, shopping and other focal points as part of the open space network.
- Avoid the unnecessary destruction of environmentally sensitive areas such as streams, floodplains and areas with substantial vegetation.
- Encourage the conservation and protection of water resources, including the proper utilization of aquifer recharge areas to meet community needs.
- Maintain water quality to provide for the protection and propagation of fish and wildlife and the enjoyment of water recreational activities.
- Plan development of watersheds in such a manner that the natural or existing drainage patterns and flood flow travel times are approximately duplicated.
- Encourage careful site planning and the use of construction techniques to minimize the adverse impact of noise, vibrations, fumes, and visual intrusions.
- Assure that minerals development protects resources.
- Develop necessary new laws, ordinances, and public policies to encourage and promote harmonious development respecting the natural environment.
- Ensure safe waste management.
Recommendations for Action Planning
- Adopt a noise control ordinance complete with standards and guidelines for acoustical site planning and construction control measures.
- Develop efforts to prevent further air quality deterioration and support available measures to improve local air quality.
- Prepare Comprehensive Watershed Management Plans to address erosion, sedimentation, and other runoff problems.
- Recommend specific actions to attain the water quality goals, evaluate wetland functions, identify degraded riparian habitat and recommend appropriate restoration programs.
- Create environmental advisory groups at the local level.
- Prepare inventories of environmental resources for use in land use decision making.
- Provide for protection of groundwater supplies including well-head protection programs.
- Explore opportunities such as private land trusts, wetlands or woodlands banking, and purchase of easements or development rights to protect important natural features.
- Provide for the linkage of environmental and recreational open space.
- Develop strategies to preserve and manage forested lands.
- Encourage partnerships between environmental and conservation agencies and the development and business community.
- Establish and maintain an open space and conservation area network, based on existing soil conditions, slopes, watercourses, vegetation and natural ecological features.
- Encourage cluster provisions and other innovative development techniques.
- Capitalize on natural resources through the retention and protection of trees, streams, and other ecological features.
- Conserve large contiguous tracts of woodland in both upland and bottomland situations in order to reduce forest fragmentation, maximize woodland interiors, and reduce the edge/area ratio.
- Natural areas containing floodplains and other areas unsuitable for development should be restricted from development except for agricultural, recreational and similar uses.
- Encourage the preservation and protection of natural areas in all development proposals.
- Implement farming conservation measures such as diversion, terraces, and grassed waterways in conjunction with contour strip cropping and crop rotations.
The Terrene Institute offers a publication entitled, Clean
Water in Your Watershed: A Citizen's Guide to Watershed Protection
which includes helpful ideas about action planning. 
The Chehalis River Action
Plan was created by citizens, businesses and agencies from the river
basin area.
Click here for Environmental Stewardship Action Plan Indicators and Linkages