COON VALLEY, Wis.- Coon Creek Watershed residents will have another opportunity to shape a plan for the Coon Creek Watershed this November, in the last of four public planning meetings conservation nonprofit Coon Creek Community Watershed Council, Inc. (CCCWC) has hosted this fall. The planning meeting will be held from 1:30-2:30 Nov. 6, at Coon Valley’s Knutson Memorial Library.
The watershed plan, which follows the Nine Element framework outlined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is meant to identify and address community concerns regarding the care and management of Coon Creek and its tributaries. The plan is a collaboration between CCCWC, partners in La Crosse, Monroe, and Vernon Counties, Valley Stewardship Network, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WI-DNR) and Coon Creek Watershed residents.
“This plan belongs to everyone who lives in or cares about the Coon Creek Watershed,” said council president Nancy Wedwick. “We are doing this work to build resilience to accelerating flooding, to create economic opportunity, to improve community health, and to care for Coon Creek’s lands and waters as best we can.”
The plan is being completed in two parts. The first part, which covers the Timber Coulee Subbasin, is on schedule to move into its implementation phase this June. The second part of the plan encompasses the rest of the Coon Creek Watershed, and will be completed over the next three years with support from a WI-DNR Surface Water Grant.
November’s event caps off a busy fall for CCCWC. The nonprofit hosted three additional watershed planning events in locations across the watershed, including an earlier event at the library to introduce the planning process and facilitate community conversation, plan outreach and youth engagement at Tucker and Becky’s Pumpkin Patch, and a screening of Decoding the Driftless followed by a planning discussion at Branches Winery.
The final meeting in this series will summarize the themes that emerged during community conversations at past events, and detail the next steps of the watershed planning process.
Some of these themes include widespread community interest in reducing flooding through land conservation best management practices, concerns about public infrastructure like roads, bridges, and culverts in the face of worsening flooding, and hopes for improved manure management practices. The conversations also touched on the need for improved watershed literacy and conservation education, water quality sampling that reflects a broad range of conditions in the Coon Creek Watershed, and stronger support for landholders implementing conservation best practices.
CCCWC hopes the November 6th meeting will inspire further discussion about priorities for the Coon Creek Watershed Plan, and next steps in the planning process. One of these next steps will be using mapping tools like the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework to identify opportunities for conservation practice implementation in the Coon Creek Watershed.
Material from past planning sessions is available on CCCWC’s planning webpage, https://cooncreekwatershed.org/nine-key-element-plan/. Those who have missed meetings but still wish to contribute to the plan are encouraged to get in touch with the council by emailing council@cooncreekwatershed.org, or by attending monthly council meetings.
The next CCCWC meeting will be held Nov. 6th at the Coon Valley Conservation Club. Dinner will begin at 6;00, followed by watershed updates and a recap of the fall watershed planning sessions at 6:30. The meeting is free and all are welcome.
The mission of the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council is to continue the historic legacy of conservation leadership through improving and restoring our soil, water, and air as stewards of the Creek Watershed. We focus on strategies and practices that individuals can implement. Together, we are learning to make running water walk.
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