Clean water action plan for Guam: unified watershed assessment

CWAP work group

In his 1998 State of the Union Address, President Clinton announced a major new Clean Water Initiative to speed the restoration of our nation's waters. This initiative aims to achieve clean waters by encouraging federal and nonfederal agencies, other organizations and interested citizens to work in a collaborative manner to restore our highest priority watersheds. In October 1997, Vice President Gore directed the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to work with other federal agencies and the public to prepare the action plan that would form the foundation for this collective effort. The plan was completed in May 1998; it is called the Clean Water Action Plan (CWAP). The federal government is committed to contributing its technical and financial resources to the implementation of the plan, but only to those states, territories and tribes that meet the Plan's requirements and time lines. Guam has responded to this federal initiative, and has committed itself to restoring and protecting our waters by working with the CWAP process. We created an interagency work group in June 1998, to design a CWAP for Guam. Guam’s CWAP work group worked quickly and after less than two months of effort, released its first required draft CWAP document, the Unified Watershed Assessment, for public review and comment. The Assessment described the action plan, the process and the draft watershed decisions made by Guam’s work group to respond to the CWAP challenge.