Highlight 4 describes a series of workshops in the Stillaguamish Watershed, Washington to educate the public about types of nonpoint sources. A public education program is a set of activities, often with a specific purpose and a target audience. Effective education programs address each target audience in terms that are meaningful to that audience. To help Snohomish County develop plans for reducing pollution in the Stillaguamish Watershed and Warm Beach area, the county held a series of workshops in May 1988. The purpose of the workshops was to educate the public about the four types of nonpoint sources that had been identified by citizen groups as most important and to form workgroups to draft text for the Watershed Plan.
Timing is an important factor in designing a public education program.
Later in the project, emphasis should shift to the implications of different control strategies, actions, or BMPs expected of each target audience, and how success will be measured. Throughout the process, project accomplishments should be reported so that support and enthusiasm for the project are maintained. In addition to the audiences mentioned above, a project team may wish to cultivate an environmental ethic in target audiences that can affect policy well into the future. These long-term audiences include schoolchildren, teachers, and civic organizations. The project team must decide how to divide resources for education among the different types of audiences.