1. The Opportunity – Working together to pursue multiple goals at once
Linked Solutions: Water, People, and Prosperity in the Kinnickinnic River Watershed
The Challenge – How can we make progress on important goals in a time of limited budgets and resources?
Health – Reducing asthma, chronic disease, and other health issues
Economic development – Creating good jobs that can’t be off-shored, saving money, and trimming costs
Stormwater – Reducing flooding, basement backups, and combined sewer overflows, especially as we face a future of increased rainfall amounts
Energy costs – Reducing energy spending in order to invest in more of what matters
Community connection – Providing places to play, gather, and enjoy
Healthy water – Keeping the water that flows into rivers and lake clean
The Opportunity – Working together to pursue multiple goals at once
In the past, people have tended to pursue these goals separately, giving different departments, professions, or groups responsibility for one or two of them at a time. But sometimes, looking for ways to achieve multiple goals at once can produce bigger results for less cost. For example, green infrastructure solutions such as green roofs and rain gardens both capture and purify water and provide other social and economic benefits, achieving multiple goals at once.
Over the next decade, state, regional, and local agencies and individual residents and businesses will spend billions on these problems one at a time. But people from all sectors, armed with good strategy, could influence this investment and steer it toward opportunities that produce multiple benefits.
Starting early in 2015, Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers, 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, and Climate Interactive are launching a process to pursue this possibility. We will be inviting strategic thinkers from all sectors of the watershed to a series of workshops to identify the best opportunities at the intersection of these goals.

2. Linked Solutions: Water, People, and Prosperity in the Kinnickinnic River Watershed
The Process – Dialog, computer support, and existing examples
Finding ways to achieve multiple goals at once can be a complex process. Information on costs and benefits must be weighed and compared, sometimes for a large array of possible scenarios over an extended period of time. To this end, computer decision support tools can be used to project future consequences of a number of choices or investments. But such tools can’t tell a community what combination of goals are of highest priority – only thinking together can do that. And sometimes, people need to learn from already implemented projects. The Linked Solutions process will therefore feature three elements – rigorous, scientifically grounded analysis of scenarios, community conversations, and a chance to learn from existing examples in the watershed. We will be inviting participation from strategic thinkers throughout the watershed, from municipalities, Milwaukee County, business groups, and civic groups dedicated to one or more of the goals that can be realized with green infrastructure. Workshops will begin in March 2015.
The Tool – The Green Infrastructure Scenarios Tool
The Linked Solutions project will rely extensively on a decision support tool created by Climate Interactive with input from many in the watershed. The tool will allow us to ask ‘what if’ questions about different actions and investments, and it will let us see impacts on everything from flooding and basement backups to jobs, water quality, and energy savings.
For more information contact:
Ben Gramling: