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.
As has been demonstrated above, there are a plethora of approaches available to community
organizers to guide them in developing an inclusive process that will build the long term civic capacity in
drinking water protection. Guiding principles from the literature above are that the participatory process
ought attempt to include a wide range of stakeholders and address issues from multiple perspectives.
Ultimately, while the impetus for the initiative may be the protection of drinking water, the issues that
will need to be addressed should be multi-objective in scope—as water is central to quality of life, issues
of community development, growth, agriculture and natural resources and all of these issues will come
into the fray of decision making about how to protect water. It will be the challenge of organizers to
move projects forward while addressing these linkages. At the same time, water quality is ultimately an
issue that forces a recognition of connections and interactions. The initiative will have to be nested in the
local context, but capable of making connections across political boundaries to ensure good management.
It is our hope the indicators above address these distinctions, and provide a widely applicable guide for
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understanding the process of community organization around water quality protection.