Watershed Partnership Releases 7 Mile Creek Community Strategic Plan

A little more than three months ago, 65 members of the 7 Mile Creek Watershed community came together for a “Watershed Conversation” to define a vision for the watershed, and to launch a future in which actions to realize that future are generated from, supported by, and energized by our community’s investment in those actions.

Although it wasn’t really the intention of the Conversation’s planners, over the course of about 2 hours and many post-it notes, the ideas that came from our community organized themselves neatly into a Strategic Plan containing six overarching goals – each with 2-3 objectives and several specific actions.

Our vision: In 2026, we will tell the story of how we came together around 7-Mile Creek – we got to know each other and we worked at understanding each others’ perspective. We focused on what we share instead of what divides us. Everyone committed to action, contributed what they could, and shared in the investment required to improve water quality while creating economic opportunity. We created a model for success that other watersheds in the Upper Midwest are adapting to create their own economic and environmental win-wins.

Our very ambitious Strategic Plan outlines the steps our community has said it will take in order to make that vision a reality. Please take a look!

The first quarterly update on our progress toward our goals will be released later this week – let us know you’d like to receive it!

And here’s a video we made about the process our community used to create our strategic plan: