The
original NEMO Program, still going strong after a decade,
developed from work being done by the Long Island Sound
Study (LISS) National Estuary Program on coastal nitrogen
pollution. Working together for the first time on the
LISS Nonpoint Source Working Group, University of Connecticut
(UConn) Cooperative Extension land use and water quality
educators linked up with the UConn Laboratory for Earth
Resource Information Systems, which had just created
the first satellite-derived land cover map of Connecticut.
This
new and unique information, incorporated into educational
programs using geographic information system technology,
became the informational foundation of NEMO. The other
major element of the program was its tight focus on
municipal land use decision makers as the target audience.
With support from the USDA/CSREES Water Quality Initiative,
NEMO was able to develop slowly, testing educational
methods in three pilot coastal communities before broadening
the program.
NEMO
has evolved in many ways since its inception. Topically,
NEMO has expanded from the basic presentation developed
in the pilot towns to over a dozen educational modules
covering many different aspects of natural resource-based
community planning, including open space planning,
community resource inventories, wetlands protection,
watershed planning and designing development to reduce
the impacts of impervious surfaces. Geographically,
NEMO has long been a statewide program: over two-thirds
of the 169 communities in Connecticut have participated
in a NEMO educational workshop. The most important
change to the program, however, has been the development
of the Municipal Initiative, in which one town in each
of Connecticut's five major watersheds is selected
each year to work with the NEMO Team on an intensive
basis. The “Muni,” which has been incredibly
successful at fostering local change, is supported
by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection's
Section 319 Nonpoint Source Program. Additional support
comes from NEMO's two major partners, the Connecticut
Sea Grant College Program and UConn Cooperative Extension.
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