The Hood Canal Integrated Watershed Plan
Download the Plan
What is the Integrated Watershed Plan?
The Integrated Watershed Plan (IWP) is a framework within which we can identify priorities, refine strategies, and make choices to achieve our common vision: “a future where Hood Canal residents and visitors benefit from and coexist sustainably with a healthy Hood Canal.”
Whose plan is it?
The Hood Canal Coordinating Council partnered with a diverse array of organizations, agencies, local governments, tribes, and citizens to produce this plan. HCCC’s board of elected officials has adopted the IWP as the guiding strategy for management of Hood Canal’s natural resources.
What does the IWP do?
- Establishes five-year strategic priorities to guide regional actions towards this vision
- Provides accountability for those strategic actions
- Identifies gaps in the implementation of those actions
- Enables continued evaluation and adaptive management of those actions
We’ve Identified 4 initial Focus Areas with measurable Indicators to gauge the success of our efforts and the ongoing health of Hood Canal. These initial focus areas are Human Wellbeing, Salmon, Forests, and Shellfish.
Human Wellbeing
Natural Resources
Strategic Priorities
The strategies below are five-year strategic priorities and their associated guiding outcomes for the recovery and protection of our Hood Canal focus areas.
- Better align and more effectively implement policy and regulatory strategies
- Inventory and assess existing countywide land use planning policies addressing land use
- Restore, mediate, or enhance our land, water, and high performing ecological functions:
- Implement the Hood Canal Regional Pollution Identification & Correction Program
- Carry out HCCC's role as the Lead Entity for Puget Sound Chinook and steelhead recovery in the Hood Canal region
- Carry out HCCC's role as the Regional Salmon Recovery Organization for Hood Canal Summer Chum
- Implement and manage the HCCC In-Lieu Fee Mitigation Program
- Complete the Monitoring and Adaptive Management Framework for Chinook salmon
- Identify climate change adaptation strategies for Hood Canal
- Host a Climate Adaptation Workshop for environmental planners and natural resource managers in Hood Canal
- Develop a Hood Canal Regional Stormwater Retrofit Plan
What does it mean to be integrated?
Hood Canal connects us. The quality of our environment, economy, community and individual wellbeing are entwined across its vast geography. This beautiful body of water nurtures our quality of life and is in turn impacted by our presence on its shores and uplands. The Integrated Watershed Plan (IWP) reflects those relationships by prioritizing actions we can take to benefit all of Hood Canal. The plan highlights how our natural resource management is integral to all facets of life in Hood Canal, and it identifies balanced solutions to long-standing problems across jurisdictions and neighboring watersheds.
Hood Canal is a social-ecological system whose community is closely tied to its natural resources. The graphic below illustrates those ties, and shows how the IWP addresses HCCC’s strategic focus areas.
Hood Canal Integrated Social-Ecological System Conceptual Model
To learn more about the Hood Canal IWP, download the Hood Canal Integrated Watershed Plan - 2017 Update.
Special thanks to the Laird Norton Family Foundation, the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their generous support.