A reader named Gary sent me a very pertinent question last week:
I recently accepted a job to build a non profit watershed council for the City of XXXX. They will provide ongoing funding once the council is established. I’m a little concerned about the title “Watersheds Council”. The city’s public outreach guru feels the word doesn’t present as negative an impression in the west as it might in the east, but I’m wondering if I should push for a title like “XXXX Clean Water Alliance”. It will be an uphill battle, but I have a suspicion it might be worth fighting before I put out a name to the public that will cause me problems from the start. Any advice?
Gary, you’re absolutely right. Your life will be much easier and you will make more of a difference if you replace the word “watershed” with “clean water” in the name of this new entity.
The problem with “watershed” is not that it provokes people, it’s that it’s just meaningless to so many. Click this link and scroll through the quotes to get a sense for that.
To be blunt — and provocative — it’s a big mistake to hide the fact that we stand for something as popular as clean water behind a word as puzzling as watershed. Yet many of us voluntarily handicap ourselves this way. There are countless “watershed councils,” “watershed associations,” “watershed specialists,” and “watershed coordinators” out there working quite a bit harder to secure appreciation and cooperation from their fellow citizens, just because of the unfortunate choice of organization names and job titles.
As if our jobs weren’t hard enough. I have no idea why we do this.
I suspect this question hits close to home for a lot of folks out there, so I’m curious about what others think. Hit the “comments” link below and share.
P.S. As for the question of whether “council” is better than “alliance,” I have no idea.
Comments
Hmmm………I agree that “watershed” has no meaning for most people, so ‘clean water’ or even ‘basin’ might be a better term. My only objection to ‘clean water’ is that it doesn’t get the connectivity in there anywhere. At least ‘basin’ gets most people to picture a sink or something.
“Alliance” always has, in my very humble opinion, an air of “us versus them” to it. As in, “we have to be allied against a common foe.” “Council” has an official ring to it, and a tone of seriousness. I use “Team” mostly because there is a sense of inclusiveness as well as action imparted by the word. Anyone can join a team, and a team is going to do SOMEthing, with everyone pulling in the same direction.
This is a great question! I hope more people write comments. The term “watershed” is very beloved in some circles, and probably a requirement for getting certain kinds of funding. (I recently learned the handy expression “bankable term,” which I think applies to the word watershed.) The word also refers to a legitimate and useful concept, as Kelly points out with her comment about connectivity. That is, you couldn’t have a “New Hampshire Watershed Council” because political boundaries are irrelevant to watersheds, but you can (and do) have a “Merrimack River Watershed Council,” which includes parts of both New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
On the other hand, Eric’s points are valid and important. So — do we go on setting up watershed councils, figuring that when we have set up enough of them the word will become a household term? Or do we instead decide that “watershed” is a term we want to introduce to people after we get their attention, but not a term that belongs in the title of an organization or initiative that seeks to attract broad public support?
Personally I think that folks associate “clean water” with drinking water and not necessarily with other aquatic environments such as lakes/rivers or even salt water. Lakes/rivers etc do not necessarily need to be drinkable to have good or excellent water quality. I agree that watershed is a difficult term for some, but what might help is if you add river/lake/estuary to make the name a bit more descriptive such as “xxxx River Watershed Council” such as Ellie suggested. My RI program is called “URI Watershed Watch” and I notice that some participants refer to it as “Water Watch” or “River Watch”.
