A Lower South Platte Watershed meeting has been scheduled for July 8 in Fort Morgan.

The meeting will offer an opportunity for landowners, organizations, agencies and businesses to be involved in making decisions about water quality issues in the watershed.

The meeting will be from 3-5 p.m. at Morgan Community College, Founders Room, 920 Barlow Road, Fort Morgan. It is open to the public.

State Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, will speak on the importance of water quality to the economic viability of the entire watershed, particularly agriculture. Commissioner of Agriculture John Stulp and Dick Parachini, from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's Water Quality Control Division, also will attend.

Mark Cronquist of Greeley, a conservation specialist with the Colorado State Conservation Board and the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said the meeting is the first of several planned for the next six months in locations throughout the Lower South Platte Watershed.

The watershed planning project, funded by the state health department's Water Quality Control Division through the Colorado Non-point Source Program, will encompass about 3.45 million acres from Platteville north and northeast to the Colorado-Nebraska state line and all or portions of nine smaller tributary watersheds within the planning area.

The goal of this planning process, scheduled for completion in November 2010 with the publication of the Lower South Platte Watershed Plan, is to empower a group of landowners, managers, conservation professionals and residents to implement and oversee the plan in their watershed and review the plan on a regular basis to determine whether changes are needed to keep the plan functional.

“The plan will assemble all currently available knowledge and resources to better understand the overall water quality flowing through this watershed. The plan that is developed will be a dynamic tool for those living in the basin to use in addressing current and future water quality issues,” Cronquist said.