The San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District has been working on the Upper Santa Ana River Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for eight years, and last month that hard work was honored with a Technology Merit Award from the Environmental Business Journal’s (EBJ) 2021 Business Achievement Awards.
The HCP is a collaborative effort among the water agencies of the Santa Ana River Watershed, in partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and other government agencies and stakeholder organizations. The purpose of the HCP is to enable the water agencies to continue to provide and maintain a secure source of water for residents and businesses, and to conserve and maintain rivers and streams that provide habitat for diverse and rare species in the watershed.
The award that was received, an EBJ Technology Merit Award, was specifically for the innovative web portal and dashboard tool that have been developed to prioritize interactivity in the Program. The online tool is a hub of information, data tracking, and reporting that can be accessed by anyone, and provides full transparency to interested parties. It was designed and created through a collaborative process with HCP consultants ICF and Stillwater Sciences, the Valley District team, and HCP stakeholders and partners.
“Having real-time access to what is going on with the HCP and the projects of the Upper Santa Ana River watershed will be incredibly helpful for the project partners, and the general public, as these projects are constructed,” commented Valley District Board President Paul Kielhold. “The web portal is a further example of the collaborative spirit of the HCP and our goal to increase and enhance engagement.”
HCP preserve managers can track the on-the-ground conditions in the preserve to facilitate overall HCP implementation using online mapping and dashboard tools for species status, management, monitoring, and threats, as well as assessing the effects of covered activity implementation on species and habitats. The Upper Santa Ana River HCP implementation portal is designed to meet the needs during the first years of HCP implementation. Future portal features are planned that will add tools to facilitate species survey data upload and analysis, and integration into a regional Multi-taxa Conservation Database developed by USGS for Southern California.
For more information, please visit uppersarhcp.com, check out the dashboard here https://www.uppersarhcp.com/dashboard or email hcp@sbvmwd.com.
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