Attend an Event
Registration OPEN for Two-Part Webinar and Conversation Café: Bringing Green Parking Lots to Your Community
Join POWR and your watershed colleagues for one or both sessions of a two-part conversation about the benefits, challenges, and opportunities for creating green parking lots in your community
Date and Time (note date change from original posting!):
Part 1: Wednesday, March 29, 2023 6:00-7:30 PM
Part 2: Wednesday, April 12, 2023 6:00-7:30 PM
Across Pennsylvania, parking lots cover thousands of acres with impervious asphalt, contributing to the urban heat island, elevating temperatures in communities, impacting water quality, and creating stormwater runoff that degrades streams and rivers. They also detract from community character and affect pedestrian and driver safety.
Green parking lots can reverse those trends by creating a landscape that not only improves the aesthetics and safety of a site, but also intercepts stormwater runoff and allows infiltration, shades parked cars and paved surfaces, and helps to cool the surrounding environment.
POWR is continuing it’s Meaningful Engagement with Local Government initiative with a FREE two-part learning series for watershed organization leaders, volunteers, and partners:
Part 1 will focus on:
• Green parking lot designs for cars and trees that improve safety and community character,
• Environmental, health, and economic benefits,
• Selecting trees and using best management practices to promote survival, and
• Managing stormwater with landscape features.
Part 2 will focus on:
• Developing municipal codes and ordinances
• Case studies of community and commercial green parking lots
During both sessions participants will be encouraged to share local examples, ask specific questions, and learn from one another’s ideas and success stories.
Sessions presenters are: Pattie E. B. Guttenplan, Assistant Director of Design & Outreach, Montgomery County Planning Commission and Vincent Cotrone, Urban Forester and Natural Resource Extension Educator, Penn State University.
These webinars are FREE but registration for BOTH must be completed separately.
Click HERE to register for Part 1 on March 29
Click HERE to register for Part 2 on April 12
Recordings Available for Past Webinars
By now you are likely aware of the critical role that riparian, or streamside, buffers play in improving and maintaining high quality waters in our rivers and streams. Yet, this is only part of the story.
Meadows and forests adjacent to waterways also serve as important habitat and migration corridors for many of Pennsylvania’s native land (and air) based animals! Knowing and understanding these additional benefits can help you engage and inspire more people in your community by tapping into the issues and creatures they may care most about.
Contact Tmacarthur@pecpa.org for a recording of this webinar where staff of the PA Game Commission and volunteers of Bird Town Pennsylvania shared their expert knowledge about mammal and bird species that use these habitats to feed, breed and raise young, take cover from predators, and migrate seasonally from their summer to winter homes.
If you missed this presentation on volunteer management best practices including volunteer engagement methods, best online tools for tracking time and activities, volunteer coordinator job descriptions, and why tracking volunteer participation matters for donors and stakeholders, contact tmacarthur@pecpa.org to request the recording.
Missed the presentation about managing the fast-growing, pervasive, and invasive Japanese Knotweed using goats?
Contact tmacarthur@pecpa.org to request a link to the recording.
POWR hosted staff of Resource Media to answer your questions about Instagram and help you get started using it.
To request a link to the recoding, contact tmacarthur@pecpa.org
POWR hosted Brenda Costa, Executive Director of the French Creek Valley Conservancy for a Lunch and Learn webinar.
Brenda shared outreach and marketing tips, ideas, and tools that can be used and applied by any organization to more effectively engage new and existing members, volunteers, and donors.
Not only do organizations benefit from increased public support, but our waterways and watersheds do, too.
What can effective, targeted, creative marketing and outreach do for you? Listen to the recording and find out!
Please email tmacarthur@pecpa.org
Resources and Links from the Conversation Café: A peer learning opportunity on meeting the challenges of local government engagement
During the Café attendees had the opportunity to hear and share a current experience, challenge or opportunity related to engaging with state or local government officials, or with a policy, plan, or initiative. Participants asked questions and shared advice, ideas, and resources. Topics discussed included working collaboratively with Bird Town PA, understanding the impacts and adverse affects of light pollution and how to minimize them, effectively (and patiently) introducing council to the idea of an EAC, and much more.
Click HERE for links to many resources, articles, ordinances, and a documentary about climate change created by one of the café attendees.
That's a Wrap! 2022 Regional Workshop for Watershed Organization Leaders and Volunteers Have Been Completed.
Thank you to all of you who attended a watershed workshop in your region and to all who volunteered time to present and share resources. Below you will find PDFs of many of the presentations- whether you want to review content you already heard or see what you missed, if you were unable to attend.
Again, we thank our workshop supporters: 
and 
A Brief Introduction to Continuous Instream Monitoring in the Susquehanna River Basin: Click HERE
Stream and Floodplain Restoration in Bull Run Watershed: Click HERE
Pennsylvania DEP’s Environmental Justice Policy: Click HERE
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Funding Programs: Click HERE
Successes, Impacts, and Opportunities of the Allegheny WINs: Click HERE
Erosion and Sediment Control/Water Encroachment: Click HERE
Thank you for attending the
Statewide Watershed Conference
Watershed Connections:
Adaptability, Resiliency, and Innovation
You can still watch recorded sessions on Facebook
Featured conference image is a photo courtesy of Chesapeake Bay Program.
Copies of the full program with session descriptions and speaker bios can be purchased for $5 each. Contact Tali MacArthur to request that a copy be mailed to you.
POWR thanks these Sponsors:
Reception and Luncheon Sponsor: Pennsylvania American Water
Watershed Leader: PA Environment Digest
Watershed Advocate: Appalachian Region Independent Power Producers Association (ARIPPA), ARM Group LLC, BEG Group LLC, Chesapeake Legal Alliance, Ernst Conservation Seeds, Susquehanna River Basin Commission, Ecotone Ecological Restoration
Carbon Offset/Sustainability: American Dairy Association North East
Nonprofit Friend: American Rivers, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, Stroud Water Research Center, Trout Unlimited, Middle Susquehanna RIVERKEEPER, and Lower Susquehanna RIVERKEEPER
We would also like to thank our supporters: The Pennsylvania Departments of Conservation and Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, the Campbell Foundation, and the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds.
You also can still access many of the presentations from POWR’s 2019 conference
POWR’s Training and Learning Webinars
Throughout the year, POWR hosts webinars at lunch or in the early evening on a topic of interest to CWOs. To date these have included presentations on geology, volunteer management, water quality reports, the stream redesignation process, river histories, conservation tools, POWR’s insurance program, and more.
Missed one of our webinars? Watch the recording on POWR’s YouTube channel. Videos are “unlisted,” so please click on the titles below to access the recorded webinar.
Volunteer Motivations, Management, Recruitment, and Retention
Connecting River Histories to Current Conservation Efforts
Stream Redesignation Evaluations and Water Quality Designations
Attracting Media Coverage for Your Activities and Initiatives
Fundamentals of Drinking Water for Watershed Organizations
Integrated Water Quality Report and Mapping Application Webinar 2019
Databases for Watershed Group Volunteer and Member Management
Conservation Opportunity Area Tool Webinar
POWR's General Liability Insurance Program
Linking Stream Hydrology/Geomorphology to Restoration
POWR’s 2020 Regional Workshops
POWR has wrapped up Regional Workshops for 2020. Thank you for joining us!
