ECWA
Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association
  • Our Watershed
    • What is a Watershed?
    • History of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed
    • Plants & Animals
    • Stories from the Watershed >
      • Blog
      • Ellerbe & Me
  • Our Preserves
    • Overview
    • 17-Acre Wood
    • The Rocks
    • Pearl Mill
    • Glennstone
    • Beaver Marsh
  • Our Work
    • Overview
    • Protect
    • Restore
    • Engage
    • Advocate
    • Creek Smart​® >
      • About Creek Smart​®
      • Walking Tours
      • Downspout Disconnection
      • Cisterns
      • Rain Gardens >
        • Siting
        • Designing
        • Installing
      • Support Creek Smart​®
  • About Us
    • Our People
    • Careers
    • Our Supporters
    • History of ECWA
    • Guiding Documents
  • GET INVOLVED
    • Volunteer
    • Attend An Event
    • Stewardship
    • Creek Watchers
    • Make Your Property Creek Smart
  • Donate

Blog

Goose Creek Parks with Purpose

3/14/2019

 
Last fall, ECWA was selected by The Conservation Fund as one of five nonprofit partners across the country to participate in a Growing Greener Foundations through Urban Parks with Purpose program. The initiative is focused on building equity through a park, trail, or water quality project that improves and heals a neighborhood asset chosen by community members.

For this project ECWA is working in an area that is relatively new to us: The Goose Creek Watershed. Goose Creek is a tributary to Ellerbe Creek that runs through downtown East Durham and flows into Ellerbe Creek right behind the waste water treatment plant on East Club Blvd. We are a full year into the Parks with Purpose Project, and we are excited about the relationships ECWA staff and board members have been building with new colleagues in East Durham.
Picture
As ECWA historically had very few ties to East Durham, staff reached out to our networks to connect with community members, professionals, and other nonprofits knowledgeable in the area. We held meetings and listening sessions with a focus group, the East Ellerbe Advisory Group. ECWA and these advisors have worked over the past several months to identify the critical steps for moving the project forward. Not controlling nor dictating the sequence of this project, but letting the community take the lead, has been a new, and at times uncomfortable, experience for ECWA. ECWA is consciously choosing to play a supporting role to help develop community leadership on a Goose Creek project.

What have we learned from this process? Issues that matter to Goose Creek watershed residents must guide ECWA’s project identification. They include: flooded playgrounds, school yards, back yards, and homes; lack of jobs; lack of affordable housing; and the “green gentrification” that occurs when new greenways are blazed through old neighborhoods. Recognizing these realities is critical to developing any future partnership opportunities that work for people and the creek. 
​
ECWA has always cared about Durham’s creeks and reducing water quality impacts from development-related stormwater. Learning and working at the neighborhood level is ECWA’s story. ECWA is now bringing that same grass-roots commitment, as well as its water quality expertise, to support community-driven environmental problem-solving in Goose Creek.
Picture

Comments are closed.

    Author

    We are a non-profit citizen support group for the Ellerbe Creek watershed in Durham. 

    Archives

    April 2022
    January 2022
    January 2020
    December 2019
    March 2019

    Categories

    All
    Creek Smart
    Protect
    Rain Gardens
    Restore
    Volunteers
    Wildlife

    RSS Feed

Picture
ECWA​
Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association

Mail:  PO Box 2679
Durham, NC 27715
Office: 904 Broad St 
Durham, NC 27705
919.698.9729
info@ellerbecreek.org
​
​OUR WATERSHED

What Is a Watershed?
History of the Watershed
Plants & Animals
Stories from the Watershed
Ellerbe & Me




​OUR PRESERVES

Overview
Glennstone
Beaver Marsh
Pearl Mill
The Rocks
17-Acre Wood
Non-Public Preserves
​
​OUR WORK

Overview
Protect
Restore

Engage
Advocate


​
​ABOUT US

Our People

Our Supporters
History of ECWA
Guiding Documents
​
​GET INVOLVED

Donate
Volunteer
Visit a Preserve
Creek Smart
Attend an Event
Copyright © 2019 ECWA   |   Terms   |   Privacy
  • Our Watershed
    • What is a Watershed?
    • History of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed
    • Plants & Animals
    • Stories from the Watershed >
      • Blog
      • Ellerbe & Me
  • Our Preserves
    • Overview
    • 17-Acre Wood
    • The Rocks
    • Pearl Mill
    • Glennstone
    • Beaver Marsh
  • Our Work
    • Overview
    • Protect
    • Restore
    • Engage
    • Advocate
    • Creek Smart​® >
      • About Creek Smart​®
      • Walking Tours
      • Downspout Disconnection
      • Cisterns
      • Rain Gardens >
        • Siting
        • Designing
        • Installing
      • Support Creek Smart​®
  • About Us
    • Our People
    • Careers
    • Our Supporters
    • History of ECWA
    • Guiding Documents
  • GET INVOLVED
    • Volunteer
    • Attend An Event
    • Stewardship
    • Creek Watchers
    • Make Your Property Creek Smart
  • Donate