Preserving the American
River Parkway:
For as long as the river runs through
it.
The leadership in our community has a responsibility to reach above all of the recent confusion about the
Parkway and create a vision that preserves, protects and strengthens this treasured resource in perpetuity.
This strategy is our contribution to that effort, and relies on using and adapting existing organizational and funding structures, which can:
- Provide permanent funding
- Provide effective management
Implementing this plan will not be
easy, but we believe our public leaders can rise to the task of creatively assuming the responsibility vested in them by the public, and provide community leadership to preserve, protect, and strengthen this national treasure.
We, our children, and generations
yet to come, are counting on them to do exactly that.
The American River Parkway is the most valuable natural resource in our community and one of the most valuable in the nation. To preserve it, building on the foundation of our five guiding principles, we propose the following:
(1) Preserving the Parkway is not an option, it’s a necessity.
- Work to ensure a long-term funding
goal of building a permanent financial endowment for perpetual Parkway funding
support.
- Work
to ensure the creation of the American
River Parkway as the Rivers
of Red Gold National
Heritage Area, a program of the
National Parks Service, but locally
managed by a nonprofit conservancy.
National Heritage status, while allowing
Parkway land ownership to remain as is, and allowing for a local conservancy
to manage the Parkway, would ensure a federal funding stream long enough
to develop endowment funding, and provide additional benefits that national stature
endows upon a natural resource.
- Work to ensure an existing nonprofit
conservancy assumes management of
the Parkway, recruiting executive
leadership with academic and experiential
credentials in nonprofit administration
and fund development, and embrace
social enterprise fund raising strategies
proven successful in other parks.
A local management conservancy can
build a fund development strategy of committed local leadership and social
entrepreneurship, through targeted capacity building of Parkway organizations
and related social enterprise ventures compatible with the conservancy mission.
(2)
What’s good for the salmon is good for the river.
- Work to ensure the availability of
whatever amount of water is needed to ensure optimal flow and temperature
for the salmon.
To provide optimal water temperature
and water flow for the salmon, it is necessary to increase the water storage
capacity of the American River Watershed, providing cooling waters and increasing
or decreasing flow when needed. While the suggested increase of the water
storage capacity of Folsom Dam will benefit the salmon, the community should
be prepared to further increase water storage capacity, if needed. The increased
pressure on the river, (primarily population-driven), will eventually destroy the river’s
capacity to provide the salmon the optimal conditions they need.
(3)
Regarding illegal camping by the
homeless in the North Sacramento
area of the Parkway, social and
environmental justice call upon
us to help the poor and distressed
person, and the poor and distressed
community.
- Work to ensure all stakeholders realize
public safety and compassion for the homeless, illegally camping in the
Parkway in North Sacramento, should be equal responsibilities addressed
by Parkway management, homeless advocacy organizations, and local government.
The public safety issue must be of
equal concern to helping the homeless. Rapes, murders, beatings, assaults,
and robberies occur regularly in the North Sacramento area of the Parkway,
and many in the North Sacramento community are justifiably fearful about venturing
into it. As a community, we can never give up on the vision that public compassion
and public safety are compatible concepts.
(4)
If it can be seen from the Parkway, it shouldn’t be built along the
Parkway.
- Work to ensure visual intrusion by
new development is absolutely prohibited forever, with no mitigation.
Private property owners are not to
be faulted for wanting to build large homes or commercial buildings along
the Parkway, as it offers some of the most beautiful development sites in
our area. However, none of us wants to see the Parkway become Malibuized.
Confusion about the building regulations, as now exists, encourages that type
of development. National Heritage Area status and the accompanying elevation
in oversight will begin to offer the type of protection from visual intrusion
caused by new development that current, virtually unregulated, Parkway development
is now threatening.
(5) Regarding new Parkway usages,
inclusion should be the operating principle rather than exclusion.
- Work to ensure local public ownership
and local conservancy management operate under the guiding principle that the
Parkway belongs to all of the people, who have an inalienable right to recreate
within the commons.
- Work to ensure there are designated
seats on the Parkway conservancy management board of directors for organized recreational
and sports users, as well as other organized stakeholders.
As a locally managed National Heritage
Area, the management position regarding use of the Parkway will become more
inclusive. We will encourage a local conservancy management structure that
incorporates all stakeholders and brings organized, responsible users to the
decision making process by creating designated seats on the conservancy
board of directors. We all want to encourage responsible usage of the
Parkway, as legitimate usage is the best antidote to illegitimate usage.
1)
Build a critical mass of public support for creating the American River
Parkway National Heritage Area with local management, endowed funding,
and folding the five guiding principles of the Society into management’s
mission.
- Society
Leadership and Membership: Through a continual campaign of informational mailings, public presentations, meetings,
fund development, and ongoing community marketing, we will work to build a
Society leadership team representative of the community, and a stable membership
base of at least 5,000.
2) Educate the relevant communities: business, religious, educational, public, nonprofit, and government, of the value
of the strategy and ask for their help in implementing it.
- Business
Community: Working with chambers of commerce within the Parkway community,
we will work to establish a Parkway task force in each chamber, whose charge
is to understand the national heritage value of the river and Parkway, as
well as the contribution of a safe and accessible Parkway to the economic
vitality of the region.
Too few people know that the Parkway is an economic engine that “generates
an estimated $259,034,030 in annual economic activity in the local economy.” (2000
figures) We will also work to involve local business in the development and
maintenance of additional Parkway nature centers, encouraging a local community
building and co-creation process that will enhance responsible usage of the
Parkway.
- Religious
Community: We will work with the interfaith pastoral leadership
of the region’s religious communities
to help create a pastoral letter on
the value of the American River Parkway
to our community and the nation, by
embracing all ethnic and cultural groups
whose history helped build our Parkway
heritage and our spiritual and reflective
life. As one model for this we would
look to, The
Columbia River Watershed: Caring for
Creation and the Common Good, an International
Pastoral Letter, by the Catholic Bishops
in the United
States and Canada.
- Educational
Community: The educational community will be encouraged to become
involved in academic research enriching the National Heritage Area status and
the importance of the Parkway to our region. As a National Heritage Area,
the Parkway can become a major ground of environmental, biological, natural
resource, park and greenway management research that will help grow the capability
of the community to preserve this national resource.
- Public
Community: Public forums will be encouraged to clarify the problems
facing the Parkway, the advantages of creating a National Heritage Area
under local management with endowed funding, and the strategy of implementation.
The public, as the major supporter and user of the Parkway, needs continual
information about the great treasure we have in our midst, and the increasing
importance of preserving its natural and created beauty for future generations.
- Nonprofit
Organizations: Nonprofit organizations working to preserve regional
history, and Parkway organizations, will be encouraged to join together
to help create a National Heritage Area. We will provide capacity building
resources about social enterprise concepts, strategic planning, fund development,
board development, communications & marketing, the benefits of collaborative management,
and how to become more closely aligned to the ongoing community needs and
issues throughout the entire Parkway.
- Government: Working with public leadership, we need to establish the case for creating the American River Parkway National Heritage Area, managed by a local non
profit conservancy. Public leaders can help develop long-term funding
for the Parkway, by working with community leadership to develop and build the
capacity of conservancy management. Public officials will be encouraged
to bring their leadership to the planning process and support the designating
of the American River Parkway as a National Heritage Area.
This plan is scheduled to be reviewed and updated every five years.
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