Beyond formal groups: neighboring acts and watershed protection in Appalachia

2.1. Watershed groups

Prior to the active involvement of watershed groups, the waterways in this study were highly degraded, sporadically managed resources. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers the two primary sources of pollution – acid mine drainage from coal mines abandoned prior to 1977³ and untreated household sewerage “straight piped” directly into streams – to be “nonpoint source pollution” (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2013). This designation means that residents lack legal recourse to systematically address the pollution; discharge permits are not required; and effluent limits do not apply to nonpoint sources. Although legal ownership of streams is vested by statute in West Virginia and administered by the West Virginia Public Lands Corporation, the Public Lands Corporation has not promulgated regulations to actively manage or determine upstream limits of waterways held in the public trust (George 1998).

The watershed groups in this study formed in response to this largely unregulated pollution that plagues many Appalachian watersheds. Although not legally stream owners, watershed groups are part of a movement to reduce pollution from the resource system and create institutions to govern the de facto commons at the local level where governance is lacking or intermittent.⁴ Both groups in this study were 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, had clearly defined internal roles, and were working toward clean water in waterways.

Working to produce change through direct action (e.g. stream restoration), the groups in this study behaved like action collaboratives (Margerum 2008), created by and comprised mostly of local residents living in the watersheds where the groups are working. Citizen-based watershed groups are more likely to pressure governmental entities to make policy changes than groups containing a mix of members from the public and private sectors (Koontz and Johnson 2004). These groups also are less likely to have social networks that provide financial and political support for their on-the-ground efforts (Floress et al. 2011).

Few watershed-group studies consider the relationship between watershed group persistence and residents of the geographic area served by the watershed group. Although many watershed groups strive to be stakeholder collaborations comprised of representatives of diverse interests, attaining representative or robust participation from individuals living throughout the watershed is often challenging (Samuelson et al. 2005; Larson and Lach 2008). This is especially true among residents in rural areas without technical skills related to watershed planning (O’Neill 2005).

Much of the existing research on watershed groups has been based on information from watershed group leaders or coordinators (Cline and Collins 2003; Koontz and Johnson 2004). Challenges arise with this approach as these individuals may have a biased or limited view of the group and its outcomes (Leach 2002), and such studies may fail to illuminate often-obscured roles of local residents who may support the group in ways other than direct participation: the role of the geographic community of residents, or the neighbors, in watershed protection is largely invisible in such literature.

Morton and colleagues provide an exception (2009, 2011) by analyzing the importance of local residents in sustaining water-quality outcomes. Morton and Brown (2011) call this the “citizen effect,” which underpins the accomplishments of the formal organization and contributes to the organization's ability to achieve its mission. Morton (2008) demonstrated that knowledge about farming practices spread during social interactions among neighboring farmers, rather than through top-down government programs. Morton's research suggests that social relationships within a community – among farmers and non-farmers, as well as among individuals and groups – can lead to adopting best management practices and developing social norms around environmentally related practices (Morton 2008; Morton and Weng 2009; Morton and Brown 2011).

Like Morton and Brown (2011), we consider the group from the perspective of local residents rather than the group leaders, many of whom may be extra-local and/or operating in multiple locales. Our research also demonstrates the importance of local residents in a different way: we describe the supportive work that enables the watershed group to function. We further illuminate the role of local people identified by Morton and colleagues to include what can be described as “neighboring acts,” or informal actions taken within a geographic community that build social capital.⁵

2.2. Local-level commons governance

Ostrom's foundational work, Governing the Commons (1990), identified principles of long-enduring commons governance institutions. Consistent with Ostrom's principles, watershed groups match resource and management boundaries by defining the physical boundaries of their work according to the watershed (Sabatier et al. 2005). In persistent commons governance systems, Ostrom (1990) found that community-based governance tends to be nested with larger governance structures involving cross-scale linkages. A local governance organization may be linked to external institutions such that “appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers” (Ostrom 1990, 19). In this way, layers of rules – such as those related to operational, collective-choice, and constitutional aspects of governance – become embedded in the commons system across geographic scales (Ostrom 1990; Carlsson and Berkes 2005).

Scholars have extended and refined Ostrom's principle of nestedness to include political dimensions of cross-scale linkages (Kashwan and Holahan 2014), as well as the importance of subsidiarity and autonomy of community-based groups within nested systems (Marshall 2007). Studies of commons governance suggest that horizontal linkages between groups in different communities or between resource user groups may be another form of nesting (Cox et al. 2010). Robust commons governance also depends on accounting for “multiple actors with multiple interests that make up communities, the processes through which these actors interrelate, and especially, the institutional arrangements that structure their interactions” (Agrawal and Gibson 2001, 12–13).

Yet, current research on the commons or watershed groups rarely describes how individuals residing within the resource system, but who are not formally part of user groups, may affect the group's local-level governance. In contemporary settings, user groups may only represent a subset of the residents and include stakeholders, such as former residents or anglers, who are not confined to a particular geographic place. We distinguish nestedness at the local level from co-existence by the reliance of the local resource management organization on local resources and rules external to the organization. This case study of persisting watershed protection augments the concept of nestedness to include that of a formal group nested within an informal network of recipients or providers of neighboring acts.

2.3. Neighboring acts

Neighboring acts have been studied in the context of crime and livelihoods (e.g. Jacobs 1961; Halperin 1990; Bellair 1997), yet they rarely have been considered in empirical research on commons governance, more broadly, or watershed groups, specifically. Our conceptualization of neighboring – informal actions taken within a geographic community that build social capital – follows that of Wilkinson (2007, 216) in understanding neighboring as a “set of reported behaviors,” rather than considering it to be a state of being or an attitude. We use social capital as it is applied in the framework for analyzing social-ecological systems; that is, it relates to norms of reciprocity and trust and is an attribute of the actors of the resource system (Ostrom 2009, Ostrom and Cox 2010). In this section, we describe the often-invisible ways of learning, acting, and networking that are part of neighboring. We consider why they are likely important to commons governance.

Although definitions and measures differ in the literature, neighboring acts are usually characterized by both the frequency and nature of interactions with neighbors (Table 1). Bolland and McCallum (2002) distinguish neighboring from friendship in that neighboring is based on proximity and can be characterized by rational, rather than emotional, engagement. Neighboring includes both social interaction and social support, which can be personal, instrumental, and/or informational; neighboring may also reinforce or legitimize social and cultural norms regarding acceptable and expected behavior (Unger and Wandersman 1985). Lund (2003), for example, differentiates between frequency of unplanned interactions and frequency of giving/receiving assistance to/from neighbors.

Research in areas ranging from crime prevention to natural resource management suggests that successful commons governance relies on interaction and information exchange between groups and individuals within the community who do not normally interact (Bellair 1997; Crona and Bodin 2006). In a high-poverty inner-city neighborhood, neighboring was found to predict collective actions such as working with neighbors to solve neighborhood problems and contacting elected officials (Bolland and McCallum 2002). In a study of neighborhood crime, Bellair (1997, 677) found attendance at a yearly gathering among neighbors to be strongly and consistently negatively correlated with events of burglary, motor vehicle theft, and robbery. Although more frequent social interactions with the same group of people might exacerbate neighborhood differences and inequalities, Bellair's (1997) research suggests that, for crime prevention, connecting with neighbors at least once a year is critical.

Although neighboring has not been explicitly studied in the context of watershed protection, social network and social interaction theory suggest its importance for resource and neighborhood protection. First, the geographic community of people living near the resource cannot be separated from the protection of the resource (Berkes 2004). In the case of the watershed, it is difficult, if not impossible, for an external entity to detect unpredictable, immediate, and acute pollution threats. Second, neighborhood residents have access to information about how water sources are changing and also can positively influence, legitimize, reinforce, or undermine the efforts of the watershed group. (This is similar to the pragmatic rationale for public participation in watershed efforts identified by Larson and Lach 2008.) Last, many difficult-to-measure cultural and social norms within a community are important to the success and persistence of watershed protection efforts (e.g. Morton 2008).

2.4. Context

The Appalachian Region of the United States stretches from southern New York to northern Mississippi (Appalachian Regional Commission 2008). Our research takes place in two central Appalachian watersheds with geographically isolated communities. Despite being rich in coal and natural gas resources, the region is characterized by persistent poverty (Thorne et al. 2004). Similar to other resource-dependent places (Peluso et al. 1994), the boom-and-bust cycles of coal mining and associated employment have had a significant impact on the region's demographics. In West Virginia (the only state located entirely within Appalachia), coal employment reached a high in 1940, with over 130,000 coal miners. With increasing mechanization, employment in the coal industry declined and, by 2009, only about 21,000 coal miners remained employed in West Virginia (West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health Safety and Training 2011).

The political and physical geography of Appalachian watersheds shape the boundaries within which watershed groups take action. The watershed groups in this study were working in the same communities that were built, owned, and operated by the coal companies – communities that witnessed the “mining wars” in the first half of the 1900s, during which coal operators and even government officials used violent tactics to try to quell the unionization of coal mines (Lee 1969). Historically, residents had little opportunity to be engaged in civic life in coal company towns, as the companies owned the houses in which people lived and paid the salaries of teachers and preachers (Duncan 2001). Today, these often isolated settlements lack basic infrastructure, are declining in population, and suffer from the legacy of coal-related pollution, including acid mine drainage, burning piles of mine waste, and lack of adequate sewage disposal.

The marginality of Appalachian coal-affected people has been well documented (Gaventa 1980; Stewart 1996). Because of a history of violence against formal labor organizations (e.g. Lee 1969), limited trust in social institutions (Duncan 1996), and the present-day politicized nature of environmental groups in southern West Virginia (Bell and Braun 2010), few locals may be willing to join a group or voluntarily interact with government officials. In addition, the region suffers from class divisions and low community-level social capital (Duncan 2001). This history of coal mining and resource dependence provides the backdrop for this research.

3.1. Watershed selection

For the focus of this study, we selected two watershed groups working within two separate watersheds. Our criteria included that the watershed groups had been active for at least five years, completed watershed management plans, and had other visible successes, such as projects, events, and participation. We selected the Green River Watershed Association and the Harmon Creek Watershed Association. Both groups – located in central Appalachia, within 45 miles of each another – work to restore and protect streams and rivers in coal-affected areas. The Green River Watershed Association, which works to protect the 250-square-mile Green River watershed, underwent a transition from one paid coordinator to another during the time of this study. The Harmon Creek Watershed Association, which focuses on the 8-square-mile Harmon Creek watershed, did not have paid staff.

3.2. Survey of watershed group members

We conducted a written survey with currently active group members in the two study watersheds. We administered the watershed group member survey in partnership with the Appalachian Coal Country Watershed Team – a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Beckley, West Virginia. Leaders of each watershed group provided a list of all individuals who volunteered for either the Harmon Creek or Green River watershed group at least twice in the 12 months prior to completing the survey. We presented the list of active volunteers to additional watershed group board members for corrections and additions; we then compared the lists with event sign-in sheets and meeting minutes. We asked each survey respondent to describe his/her participation in the watershed group over the last year. Response rates were 94% (34 of 36) in the Harmon Creek watershed and 76% (19 of 25) in the Green River watershed (Table 2).

3.3. Survey of non-group-member residents

We administered in-person surveys of a random sample of 48 residents from the two watersheds in this study at respondents’ homes. We used a paper-based questionnaire, which allowed documentation of additional commentary on each survey. Direct quotes from non-group-member residents were recorded at the time of the survey. Following conversations with key informants during pilot testing, we included questions related to community involvement and the respondent's relationship with watershed groups on the non-group-member survey. We consider three of these items similar to “neighboring acts” in the published literature: watching a neighbor's children, participating in a community crime watch, and tending a local park or cemetery. We asked open-ended questions about community involvement, such as, “Are there activities you do with the well-being of your local community in mind?” We also asked about individual acts of watershed protection and information-gathering, such as removing trash from a body of water or asking for the results of a water-quality test. We included items related to concepts found to be precursors to one's willingness to become involved in cleaning up local streams, such as awareness of the nearest stream/river and appraisal of its condition (Forsyth et al. 2004). The survey contained additional items related to awareness of and personal connections to the local watershed group.

3.4. Key informants and participant observation

Additional contextual data in the results section come from the first author's participant observation and personal communication with key informants. Key informants were watershed group leaders and government agency staff who worked closely with watershed groups. During 2008 and 2009, the first author attended watershed group meetings and events, reviewed group documents (e.g. meeting minutes, planning documents, and grant proposals), and received watershed group emails (intended for regular meeting attendees). As a participant observer, the first author kept detailed field notes and took care to gather a range of different perspectives on the same events, as advised by Emerson et al. (1995). The opening quote of this article, for example, was noted verbatim during a conversation with a key informant (pseudonyms used).

4.1. Extent and characteristics of links between geographic communities and watershed groups

4.2. Watershed group success: performance and persistence

5.1. Neighboring acts and watershed protection

Our findings offer a new application of measures of neighboring in the academic literature (Lund 2003; Kusenbach 2006). Traditionally, these measures have represented interactions between individuals; we extend neighboring to include interactions between individuals and a group operating in the same geographic area. An individual-to-individual interaction focused on helping with “small tasks in/around the house,” for example, which is a measure of instrumental neighboring (van Eijk 2012), in this case extends to include help with small tasks in/around the watershed or the watershed building.

Our findings indicate that neighboring acts, or the informal actions taken within a geographic community that build social capital, were commonplace and often unplanned. We found three key features of neighboring that contributed to watershed protection that may apply more broadly to commons governance. First, residents in these watersheds were present in and paid attention to the local environment. Related to Kusenbach's (2006) Proactive Intervention, or “Watching Out,” principle of neighboring, everyday monitoring contributed to watershed protection. Second, neighbors responded to requests from other neighbors for assistance and/or recognized opportunities to act on behalf of their communities with activities, such as reporting trash dumping or tending a public park. In this case, giving and receiving assistance to/from neighbors (e.g. Lund 2003) was extended to the watershed commons. Third, local residents were willing to take unplanned or unscheduled action such as reporting illegal trash dumping. This echoes past neighboring studies emphasizing the unplanned nature of neighboring acts: asking for help when sick (van Eijk 2012), frequency of unplanned interactions (Lund 2003), or Friendly Recognition (Kusenbach 2006). Our findings demonstrate that willingness to engage in unplanned tasks was also critical to the monitoring and maintenance of watershed projects and conditions, particularly where change in the resource was unexpected and rapid.

5.2. Geographic communities support commons governance

Frameworks for analyzing Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) and the sustainability of social-ecological systems (Ostrom 2009; Ostrom and Cox 2010) provide insight into the relationship between resource systems, governance systems, and the actors within them. Our findings contribute to these frameworks by bringing attention to the geographic community of residents, especially non-group-members. Under certain circumstances, the local residents we highlight, who are not formally part of governance groups, take part in actions affecting resource governance. We describe neighboring acts through which geographic communities connect with and support community watershed groups and clean streams. Neighboring acts are observable and can be measured, while many intra-community dynamics are difficult to measure.

Our findings suggest that certain aspects of the “social setting” in the social-ecological systems framework and the “attributes of the community” in the Institutional Analysis and Development may influence the governance process and outcomes; thus, they should be considered endogenous to the system. Moreover, our findings indicate that the watershed groups build social capital (trust and norms of reciprocity) within the community beyond the group itself. In this way, in the social-ecological system framework, social capital is not only an attribute of the actors, but it can also include non-group-member residents of the geographic community.

5.3. Everyday monitoring: Local residents enhance monitoring capacity of group

In Appalachia, flooding, mine bursts, and pollutant spills are unpredictable. As those living near these occurrences are the first to observe and be affected, they can also be the first to report and mitigate potential damages. In addition to noticing threats when they happen, being in the community may facilitate long-term monitoring of restoration.

Our findings suggest that, when engaged, local residents enhanced the monitoring capacity of watershed organizations. Monitoring, which involves taking measurements over time of biological and physical variables with the intention of identifying both ecological impacts to the resource as well as patterns of use (Lovett et al. 2007), requires regular engagement with the resource. Adaptive management draws attention to the importance of monitoring, not only in terms of the ability to identify violators quickly and enforce regulations, but also in terms of understanding the resource and adjusting management based on changing conditions (Berkes 2009). Monitoring also requires rapid response to changes or threats, facilitated through commons governance; this contrasts to the actions of a formal organization with structured, pre-organized meetings and work hours.

In our study, local residents, who were the first to observe and report violations or changes in water quality, are similar to the “sniffers” in the Louisiana and California “bucket brigades” who alert a trained sampler when they detect a potential air-quality problem (O’Rourke and Macey 2003), or the shopkeepers who deter potential perpetrators of crime simply by having their “eyes on the street” (Jacobs 1961). Although everyday monitoring is an important form of participation for watershed protection, it is often invisible to regulatory agency staff. By contrast, watershed groups, such as the Harmon Creek Watershed Association, recognize the value of this type of neighboring act to restoration.

5.4. Watershed group nested in geographic community

These two cases demonstrate the nestedness of an organization – itself a neighbor – in a community, neighborhood, and network of neighboring acts. In addition to more commonly discussed elements of co-management and cross-scale interactions (e.g. Cox et al. 2010), we strive to illuminate the concept of nestedness, often invisible outside the community. Nestedness is usually defined by how a group interacts vertically with state agencies or other levels of governance (Carlsson and Berkes 2005) or horizontally, with respect to a community group interacting with other groups (Cox et al. 2010).

In our case, we observed a broader phenomenon of nestedness occurring within a geographic community, with watershed groups acting as neighbors, giving and receiving neighboring acts. Neighboring acts initiated by the watershed group – hosting events at their space, monitoring changes in the watershed, cleaning up physical spaces shared with other neighbors – encouraged social interaction and generated social capital. We observed an informal process of information exchange between neighbors and a group; a similar process of building social infrastructure contributed to the highly successful restoration of the Long Tom Watershed in Oregon (Flitcroft et al. 2009).

Our findings affirm those of Morton (2008): to maintain environmental outcomes of watershed groups, the social norm of watershed protection must extend beyond those formally involved. The watershed groups encouraged neighboring acts related to watershed protection by demonstrating success in a visible way and showing that collective and individual actions could contribute positively to a place. By recognizing opportunities to engage residents in diverse forms of participation, the watershed groups validated the multiplicity of ways in which people could and were giving to their communities. Although many of the neighboring acts were functional – such as repairing the watershed building, hosting a picnic, or responding to an emergency – they also developed into social norms, laying the groundwork for future collective action. The groups in this study were part of the civic structure (Morton 2008) and enhanced community-level social capital (Duncan 2001) in a resource-dependent area otherwise characterized by the decline of population and social capital (Bell 2009).

5.5. The necessary role of government

Although the watershed groups in this study filled a governance gap, long-term watershed restoration also requires active, accountable government participation. While neighboring acts create social capital, restoration projects also require financial capital to be built, maintained, and monitored (Lukacs and Ortolano 2015). Leach and Sabatier (2005) found that, while social capital led to higher levels of agreement about watershed group projects and goals, financial capital was necessary for project implementation.

Weber (2003, 11) raises important questions about accountability – defined as “a system, or set of mechanisms, designed to make sure promises are kept, duties are preformed, and compliance is forthcoming” – in local-level commons governance that are relevant to this paper. To whom, and for what actions and outcomes, are the government and/or watershed groups accountable? The Harmon Creek Watershed Group, for example, received state and federal grants to build a treatment system for acid mine drainage from abandoned mines, extending their accountability beyond the local level. In addition to watershed residents monitoring the stream for changes, the watershed groups needed access to external financial and technical resources. Moreover, this study's watershed groups have no formal authority to hold polluters or government agencies accountable; rather they rely on current government regulation and enforcement to curb pollution from active coal mines, prevent future abandoned coal mines, and provide funding for water quality, safety, and health threats from coal mines abandoned prior to federal and state regulation. The nestedness of the watershed groups within external government structures remains critical and complementary to the type of community nestedness we discuss.