Goals

The BOB project began with a series of Conservation and Common Sense Development educational conferences. In 2003 that effort expanded into the current BOB work, made possible in large part by the EPA-funded Watershed Initiative Grant (WIG) received by Cumberland River Compact. The WIG project is putting a $600,000 EPA grant to work over a 3 year period to demonstrate sustainable building and restoration techniques that improve water quality on three 303 (d) listed impaired streams. Using innovative and practical methods as demonstration projects, the project will focus on one impaired stream in each of three watersheds within the Cumberland River Basin – the Harpeth River, Red River, and Middle Cumberland Watersheds.

The goal of the BOB project is to demonstrate and promote the use of sustainable building practices for the benefit of water quality and the residents of the Cumberland River watershed.

To do this, each of three impaired streams are the site of a demonstration project incorporating two important components:

1. Demonstrate sustainable design features for homes or farms that promote water conservation and pollution prevention during construction and maintenance
2. Use of Best Management Practices to restore water quality in impaired streams through stream bank restoration and improved land care practices.

Together the techniques will result in measurable improvements in water quality and serve as teaching tools for replication across the country. The model provided by this project includes both the technical aspects of water protection and the public private partnership building that is critical to successful long-range change.

The other component of the project is education. Lessons and techniques of the project will be disseminated in two important ways:

1. Through the Southeast Watershed Assistance Network (SWAN), an extensive interactive website that will spread information on watershed protection to people across the globe.
2. The BOB Curriculum, a series of educational workshops is being offered through the BOB partners on a variety of topics relevant to sustainable building practices. The partnerships that brought this project to reality will continue working together to make the most of this extraordinary opportunity.