One Water Santa Barbara

About This Project

K&A has had the distinct honor of supporting and guiding the City of Santa Barbara Water Resources Division through the development of their own unique One Water Santa Barbara program. This process started and has largely remained an intra-department effort, creating a shared internal vision and commitment. This internal implementation will inform future external communications with other city departments and the Santa Barbara community. The process has made clear the vision, guiding principles and role of One Water Santa Barbara in creating a paradigm shift in the way water is managed throughout the city. K&A ensured that the Water Resources Division was, once again, at the forefront of ensuring an open and transparent communication process internally to share ideas, concerns, opportunities and challenges to create an agreed-upon road map for implementation.

K&A ran three workshops to help the City begin internal discussions and establish its vision for One Water. The first workshop initiated the project with Division leadership to determine process, key players and strategy for development. The second workshop was a Visioning Workshop and convened representatives from internal departments and groups within Water Resources and the City’s Sustainability Office to define what One Water means for the City, identify opportunities for integration and collaboration across departments and establish guiding principles for advancing One Water. The third workshop – the Communications and Outreach Workshop – built on the visioning discussion and focused on refining the vision and guiding principles, while also identifying projects and programs across the city that already or could potentially “live out” the key tenets of One Water Santa Barbara. From these workshop and other activities, K&A prepared a One Water Strategic Communication Road Map.