The indicators and measures are chosen to provide a sense of the level and type of involvement
by the community in the initiative. These process indicators will be used in the model that we have
developed to better understand how communities organize and sustain initiatives to protect water quality.
Clearly, the availability of financial resources at the community level and the economic and ecological
variables will play a role in the success of these initiatives in the long run. We hypothesize that issues of
community participation, the process by which the leaders of the initiative try to organize community
members to protect water quality, will be the more important variables in success or failure of community
based water quality protection. Our model will test that hypothesis.