Sugar Creek Method

Encourage Local Participation

An important characteristic of the Sugar Creek Method is the vision and responsibility that each local team developed for its own sub-watershed.

What Resulted from Local Participation at Sugar Creek?

When the local efforts began, few residents knew the name of their watershed or the level of pollution.

Yet in three years they formed sub-watershed teams that are building new networks, remediating the pollution, and exploring new ways to work and live along the stream.

They were able to create a methodology that was appropriate to the unique characteristics of their community.

The characteristics of the local team are related to their values and sense of moral responsibility.

For example:
The Upper Sugar Creek team members who self-selected each other were mid-scale (500-1000 acres) farmers with mixed livestock and grain operations (except for one grain farmer). As a group they shared the common problems of lack of sufficient scale to be cost-effective, aging facilities, and dilemma of rising costs and dropping commodity prices.