Plan a Growth Readiness Workshop in your Community
Is your community experiencing stress from urban sprawl?

The Community Growth Readiness Workshop will provide your city or country with the tools to design economically viable and watershed-friendly development.
More information and sample agenda (PDF)

Southeast Community Growth Readiness Initiative

The Community Growth Readiness Initiative provides both an information/training approach as well as a facilitative approach to assist community leaders in reviewing current land use practices. The information and training includes presentations on the impact of imperviousness on watershed functions and the economics of good watershed management and site design. The timing of this program with new Stormwater Phase II requirements makes it particularly relevant as communities look for inexpensive, nonstructural approaches to managing polluted runoff.

The Community Growth Readiness Initiative builds on the Southeast Forum's watershed leadership Train-the-Trainer program and its hands-on work with communities in Tennessee. It is being developed in response to interest from other communities throughout the region. The program provides a replicable template that can be applied in other regions of the country.

Objectives

1. To assist local communities in protecting their land and water resources by providing visual tools and training for wiser land use-planning within a watershed context.
2. To facilitate a consensus process among local leaders that will result in support for wiser land-use practices.

In the last ten years, the Southeast has lost more open space, farmland and forests to sprawl and development than any other region in the country. This region accounts for approximately 34% of all open space lost in the United States. At the 1999 Southeast Watershed Forum Roundtable in Knoxville, Tennessee, participants representing diverse interests from nine states identified urban sprawl, land fragmentation, development of rural areas and interbasin water transfers as the greatest threats facing the Southeast in the next decade. But they also said, that in spite of the unprecedented need for growth management, the Southeast lacks mechanisms for regional planning and the political will to manage growth, while possessing a long-held cultural resistance to land-use planning and zoning.

Tennessee Growth Readiness Project

Download a copy of the Tennessee Growth Readiness Report (pdf) Tennessee Growth Readiness: Water Quality Matters, is a progress report on the Tennessee Growth Readiness Program, a three-year initiative designed to help local officials make informed decisions about managing growth while protecting valuable water resources in their communities.

For two years the Tennessee Valley Authority, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and the Southeast Watershed Forum have worked with members of the Knoxville and Blount County region to fashion the Tennessee Growth Readiness Project. The project uses strong visual land-use data, particularly predictive data reflecting the environmental impact of growth, to guide local land use planning and watershed protection efforts. Using materials developed by the NEMO Program (Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials) and the Center For Watershed Protection, the program includes three elements:

1. an extensive set of educational materials and power point presentations aimed at different stakeholder audiences
2. a training program to prepare local leaders to deliver the materials in an effective manner
3. facilitative assistance in establishing a consensus-based process to review current codes and ordinances

Pilot Projects

• Blount County, Maryville and Alcoa, TN
  The staffs of all three jurisdictions have reviewed their codes and ordinances in light of ways to reduce impervious cover and maintain vegetative corridors to manage runoff. TVA has developed extensive data on current and projected growth patterns and their impacts on water quality. The County has completed a series of public meetings to assess public attitudes and priorities about growth and development impacts. Currently, the planning staffs are working to make each jurisdiction's codes and ordinances consistent.
• Knox County, TN
  Knox County has chosen to develop a "Site Planning Roundtable" which includes a diverse spectrum of community representatives. These representatives will work through a consensus-based process to assess the need to upgrade or modify any of Knox County's Codes and Ordinances to better prepare the county for the current and future impact of growth and development on local water resources.