Growing Regional Impact: 2025 Kickoff of the Greater Chicago Watershed Alliance

Last week, over 50 participants attended the first General Meeting of 2025 for the Greater Chicago Watershed Alliance to kick off the year, reconnect, and outline future priorities. Since initiated by Friends of the Chicago River in 2020, the Watershed Alliance has convened leading agencies, advocates, and implementers responsible for watershed management across the region to promote multi-benefit, nature-based solutions, prioritizing investments where they are needed most and addressing overlapping environmental stressors caused by the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and historic disinvestment.

Among its accomplishments in the past five years, the Watershed Alliance was pivotal in the development and launch of the award-winning Natural Solutions Tool, which has helped to secure over $8 million in grants for regional partners to advance watershed benefitting plans, policy innovation research, and project implementation. With the federal funding landscape shifting drastically since 2020, the Watershed Alliance becomes an even more critical coalition, providing members the opportunity to collectively track and respond to changing policies and financial uncertainties that threaten local water and environmental safeguards while pursuing nature-based solutions together and forging ahead.

Recognizing the urgency of this moment, Watershed Alliance members remain committed to working together to sustain and scale our impact. Our action plan for 2025 includes:

• Expanding our circle: We are doubling down on collaboration by welcoming new partners through targeted membership growth and leveraging the unique expertise of each member to build our collective power.
• Growing financial capacity for watershed innovation: We will support each other and our shared priorities by pursuing joint funding opportunities in priority areas within the Chicago-Calumet river watershed.
• Fostering peer learning and innovation: We are committed to creating a dynamic space for learning, networking, and coordination- where regional and national best practices are shared and success stories inspire action. This work builds on the efforts of the Calumet Stormwater Collaborative, which has recently come under the Watershed Alliance umbrella.
• Turning plans into projects: Leveraging technical resources from our members, we will continue to nurture partnerships and advance green infrastructure projects from ideas to fully-funded realities.

Friends of the Chicago River is proud to host this collaborative and convene partners in support of a healthier, more resilient region. To learn more or get involved, please contact Tessa Murray at tmurray@chicagoriver.org or (312) 939-0490, ext. 18.