Does your community, region, or state need to talk about water? If you are facing contentious, difficult water issues, and want to help people come together to set directions, provide guidance, or decide how to work together, deliberative public forums could help you move forward. Let’s Talk About Water is designed to help you create a framework and simple materials to guide these discussions and assist people in engaging deeply and productively with each other.

Part of NAAEE's Environmental Issues Forums series, Let's Talk About Water provides a step-by-step guide to developing discussion materials to get your community deliberating about water issues.

Let’s Talk about Water is the product of a collaboration among the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), five NAAEE state affiliate teams, centers for deliberative politics that are part of the National Issues Forums Institute network, and the Kettering Foundation. This collaboration has yielded state and regional water issue frameworks, and the raw materials for this aid to developing deliberative issue guides for other states, regions, and local communities. 

Get Your Own Copy of Lets Talk About Water

• Download a PDF of Lets Talk About Water
• Download a Word version of the Generic Water Issues Framework

Get Your Own Copy of State-Designed Water Issue Guides

Are you interested in groundwater, springs, reservoirs, urban stormwater, or water quantity? If you are, see how educators in four states framed these issues to inspire deliberative discussions. Although each framing is specific to a state, these issue guides provide models that might help you build a water issue framework designed for your own community.

• Water Availability in Colorado: How Should We Meet the Challenges of Increasing Water Demands with Decreasing Water Availability?
• Polishing Florida's Gems: Choices for Springs Restoration and Protection
• This Drains to Your Creeks: How Should We Manage Stormwater Runoff to Protect Florida's Urban Watersheds?
• How Do We Use and Manage Groundwater in Wisconsin's Central Sands?
• Health of Kansas Reservoirs: Milford Reservoir Health Water Issue Discussion Framework

Want More Information about the Environmental Issues Forums?

In addition to Let's Talk About Water and the state-specific water issue guides, you'll find issue guides focusing on climate change and energy issues.  We've also developed moderator resources and materials for classroom use. 

For more information about EIF, visit naaee.org/eif.