With point sources in the Schuylkill River Watershed largely under control, and agriculture losing ground, the future of water quality lies in our ability to prevent and control stormwater runoff from residential development. For some communities in the watershed, prevention is no longer an option — urbanized landscapes require costly retrofits to provide even a fraction of the stormwater-management value they had historically. But in less developed areas, using available funds to implement stormwater-management protections makes the best economic sense. The Watershed Land Protection Collaborative is working to identify, promote and facilitate the protection of these priority lands. Since reconvening in November 2004, the Collaborative has provided critical guidance on the prioritization effort further described below, and it has developed a work plan for 2007.

• Watershed Land Prioritization Project
In 2005, a group of partners from the Collaborative — including the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Natural Lands Trust, and the Philadelphia Water Department — was awarded a Pennsylvania Growing Greener grant for use in prioritizing lands and outreach regarding habitat and source-water protection. This effort seeks to ensure the best possible use of limited funds by drawing upon sophisticated GIS (geographic-information-system) modeling to identify the areas where protection will provide the greatest return for both source-water quality and critical habitat. These

results will be used by SAN to target land protection in these areas through outreach, assistance and cooperation with partners.

Status: Development of the model and prioritization are now complete. The process of identifying priority areas began with outreach to local governments and partners in spring 2007.