ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how farmers and landowners come to identify with the watershed for the sake of soil and water conservation. It demonstrates that the commonplace of the watershed succeeds in its rhetorical work to prompt farmers and landowners to embrace conservation efforts based on their identification with the watershed. Clear Creek Watershed Enhancement Project ongoing challenge is communicating with and attempting to change the practices of agricultural landowners throughout the watershed, and their potential success has relevance for agricultural conservation efforts throughout the state. The watershed topos, for Gene, has become rhetorical language, serving as an inducement to act for the sake of soil and water conservation in his common-place. The watershed's persuasiveness emerges from the fact that this conceptual work grafts onto the physical, material landscape. In the late 2000s, extensive flooding offered an opportunity for the watershed topos to have a significant impact on Clear Creek's farmers and landowners.
