Healthy Headwaters

Healthy Headwaters Seventh Leadership Convening Summary - Sacramento, CA

This convening held May 16, 2013 in Sacramento focused on the evolving policy scaffolding for investment in green infrastructure, headwaters protection and downstream water security, and the innovations needed to better support these efforts.

Healthy Headwaters Sixth Leadership Convening Summary - Portland, OR

Carpe Diem West's Sixth convening was held November, 2012. This summary focuses on the emerging political landscape for opportunities for investment in green infrastructure, headwaters protection and downstream water security.

Healthy Headwaters Alliance Policy Platform

The Policy Platform lays the foundation for the Healthy Headwaters Alliance’s support of community-level headwater protection work, both through the effective use of existing programs and the development of new programs and policies designed to promote healthy, resilient headwaters systems. May 2012

Healthy Headwaters Fifth Leadership Convening Summary - Phoenix, AZ

Carpe Diem West’s Healthy fifth convening was held on On April 27, 2012.  An invited leadership group from this stakeholder network addressed crucial emerging issues in creating resilient watersheds and water security in the American West in a time of climate change.

Testimony Before the United States Congress

Carpe Diem West submitted testimony to call the Congress’s attention to vital headwaters and watershed protection and restoration work that communities around the West are undertaking in partnership with federal agencies in order to protect their water supplies, and to emphasize the crucial role that continued federal investments play in supporting that work. February 2012

Watershed Investment Programs in the American West

This report provides more complete and up-to-date information on existing watershed investment programs across the West, identifies some communities and watersheds that could be fertile ground for new programs, and discusses some fundamental questions that merit careful consideration by policy makers, water utilities and public land managers as these programs develop and expand in the future. November 2011

Success Story! Santa Fe, NM - Sustaining the Watershed

More than a third of the municipal water supply for Santa Fe’s 80,000 residents comes from the Santa Fe River, which flows from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains just east of town. Most of the river’s watershed lies in the Santa Fe National Forest, including 10,000 acres within the Pecos Wilderness Area. Threats to watersheds come in many forms, but in the Southwest the one that rises to the top of the list is catastrophic wildfire. A series of large-scale fires has struck the region’s ponderosa pine forests recently: the 48,000-acre Cerro Grande fire in northern New Mexico 2000, two fires in eastern Arizona— the 468,000-acre Rodeo-Chediski fire in 2005 and the the 538,000-acre Wallow Fire in 2011—and the 150,000-acre Las Conchas Fire, which burned 60 percent of the Bandelier National Monument in 2011.

Success Story! Denver, CO - Seeing the Forest for the Water

Denver’s skyline features the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains, which provide essential drinking water supplies to this large and fast-growing metropolitan area. The Forest Service describes the Colorado Rockies, which form the headwaters for seven major U.S. river systems as the nation’s water towers. The forested watersheds that are the heart and soul of those water towers are at increasing risk from catastrophic wildfires on a scale far beyond what they experienced under natural conditions. Fuel buildup, from century of fire suppression and in some cases infestations of bark beetles resulting from a warming climate mean that Colorado’s forests are primed to burn. Oct, 2011