Stakeholder preferences for best management practices for non-point source pollution and stormwater control

Typically, communities implement some subset of best management practices (BMP) to control their stormwater flows and NPS. Phase II of the U.S. Clean Water Act (CWA) requires public input, education, and participation, among other things, as part of watershed management planning processes for addressing nonpoint source pollution. It has been recognized that integrating stakeholders’ input and values into decision-making processes often results in good public policies adequately supported by the public. Choice experiment survey approaches are well suited as a means for increasing public participation in watershed decisions and for evaluating the relative attractiveness of alternative BMP for stormwater management and non-point source pollution control. Therefore we designed and implemented a choice experiment survey to learn about public preferences for alternative best management practices (BMP) for stormwater water management, identify BMP combinations likely to be supported by local stakeholders, and to increase public participation in watershed management decision making. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of choice experiments for evaluating preferences for alternative BMP for watershed management. Furthermore, the results reveal that stakeholders clearly prefer some BMP to others and that the extent of each BMP's application in a watershed plan matters to stakeholders.

► Choice experiment surveys well suited for increasing public participation in watershed decisions.
► Homeowners able to make trade-offs between alternative BMP for water pollution.
► Homeowners prefer plans with high rather than low levels of natural looking BMP.