It’s all about the watershed resilience and building partnerships

OGDEN—On Jan. 11 and 12, the Weber River Partnership held a conference to facilitate communication about the Weber River Watershed. This two-day conference provided community members the opportunity to discuss how to collaborate and help improve the watershed. It was held at the Ogden Eccles Conference Center.

Over the course of these two days, panelists, discussions and keynote speakers got together and talked about ways to contribute funding and build partnerships regarding the watershed impact. 

“We need everybody’s partnership, and so the goal is to focus on where our interests overlap,” said Dawna Zukirmi from the Weber River Restoration & Enhancements Project. The conference’s purpose was to facilitate communication, collaboration and coordination to help watershed stakeholders aim toward improvements and funding opportunities. 

The description from the event posting read, “Our purpose for this two-day conference is to attract all stakeholder groups in the Weber River Watershed to come together to spotlight challenges and successes, to help establish a holistic view and to facilitate networking opportunities and the building of partnerships. This will ease the way for different groups to work together to achieve strategic success with projects and grant funding opportunities where their interests overlap in the watershed.”

One of the workshops was specifically about how to become part of the planning process. It was led by Jessica Kirby, Summit County Public Lands Manager. Lizzie Marsters and Natasha Collins from World Resource Institute were also there to answer questions about funding opportunities.

“If you don’t have someone in the institutions that are making this work, you need to make it a priority because it can be hard to get that consistent funding and the support we need from political leadership perspective to make sure this work is happening on the ground,” said Marsters, Environmental Finance Manager, Natural Infrastructure at World Resource Institute.

Conference-goers were influenced to think about this conference as a discussion of watershed resilience. Private landowners were also asked to think about what they could contribute to the needs of the watershed.

“If you’re not telling people what you need help in, you’re not going to get the funding you need,” said Kirby. She went on to explain that there are a “ton of federal funds out there,” and what needs to be happening is communication. One of the attendees, a woman involved with noxious weed studies, stated that she had monies left from a grant and was able to share those funds with someone else who was working on a study in the same area.

Zukirmi, who is also the owner of Destination Sports, helped to pull the conference together. Zukirmi, a Morgan native, has been around water her entire life. “The main message to the community about this event is that it’s a serious outreach to agricultural producers because of all the different grant funds that are available to property owners,” she said. “We need to focus on trying to build partnerships because we can be successful in numbers when we look outside our own scopes.”