This fosters local control over the outcome of the overall project, which also is a key to overall acceptance and then success. Lesson Learned - Achieving pollution abatement in a more timely, cost effective fashion must have general public support which can be assisted by combining the watershed approach with the concept of phasing in needed pollution controls. What they do understand and appreciate is whether a waterway is fishable and swimable. Generally local commitments to address pollution problems in a watershed will come in small increments with the demand to demonstrate the value of those increments if support is to be sustained. Each person who lives in the watershed needs to be educated as to how their individual daily actions affect the conditions of the River.
Public support depends on public awareness and education.
Education and involvement drives action. Therefore public education efforts should be viewed as a campaign with intensity and high stakes. The Rouge River Project has developed a number of tools and programs to this end, including an education project with more than 100 participating schools, an annual water festival, placement of signs at all river crossings, and support of existing efforts carried on by non-profit and educational institutions. By solving problems with high flow, many water quality and ecosystem health problems will also be solved. In urban areas, the streams experience high flows during wet weather events.