ABSTRACT
There is a dark side to evaluations. Think of your last performance evaluation. Evaluation is as critical to watershed management efforts as goals and objectives are. Most evaluations to document the project’s achievement occur at the end of the project. Usually this is too late. Without collecting the appropriate information during the implementation phase, you cannot determine if the effort was successful in having its desired impact. Based on the proper design and data collection approach, evaluations need to be an ongoing part of any watershed management effort. The typical watershed management effort is designed to accomplish a specific task within a specific period and is usually evaluated against the completion of that task rather than the impact due to completion of the task. Kondolf and Micheli
state that despite increased commitment, evaluations have been generally neglected. An example of this neglect is the Section 319 funded North Fork Embarrass River Project (Illinois), whose purpose is to protect and improve the river’s water quality by reducing nonpoint source pollution. The project will be evaluated against the number of installed management practices versus projected in the proposal, quarterly newsletters, bimonthly news releases, water-quality meetings and workshops, education/information tours and outdoor classrooms, and educational activities for schools. The project is not being evaluated against water quality or pollutant load reductions, so the project’s impact in relation to the reason the project was funded is not even being examined as part of the project. In addition to accounting for the specific activities being started and resources expended, evaluations need to be designed to detect the long-term impact of these activities. Successful evaluation requires clear, meaningful, and measurable milestones and objectives for the plan and its implementation.
