San Diego County Water Authority: Public Participation
About this project
Client
San Diego County Water Authority
Services
Public Outreach
The approach
In 2022, San Diego County Water Authority and City of San Diego, embarked on early public outreach, planning and design for the San Vicente Energy Project, a proposed project with potential to provide an extremely promising clean energy solution in California. The project would store solar power in the existing San Vicente Reservoir in Lakeside and generate energy for an estimated 135,000 homes per day. The project would enhance energy reliability for San Diego, while helping California fight climate change and move toward its goal of 100% clean energy by 2045. While the success of this project would provide lasting benefits to the San Diego region, the project team recognized a strategic public outreach plan was needed to increase awareness of the project, its benefits, timeline and how to get involved in the design and planning process. JPW Communications was enlisted to assist carry out these goals.
The opportunity
JPW worked with the project partners to develop a comprehensive strategy to guide early outreach efforts. The strategy was intended to:
Ensure alignment between the internal project team (San Diego County Water Authority, City of San Diego, and partners) on outreach approach, goals, key milestones and engagement with external audiences
Increase awareness of the project, its benefits, timeline and how to get involved
Gauge stakeholders’ baseline knowledge, questions, perceptions and concerns about the project
Establish the San Diego County Water Authority and City of San Diego as the most credible sources of information about the project
Create external ambassadors and supporters of the project early in the process
Understand stakeholders’ preference for receiving project information and develop targeted lists to reach them throughout the process
The project team also faced the daunting task of translating complex and technical details about the project into plain language, easily understood by target audiences at the early conceptual phase of the project.
To establish a baseline understanding of stakeholder sentiment and project knowledge and test “plain language” messaging, the project team conducted informal research through briefings, presentations and meetings about the project with both internal and external audiences. Through this effort, the team observed a general lack of awareness about the project, potential benefits and next steps with primary stakeholders. In these conversations with stakeholders, the team was also able to identify messages about the project that were clear or confusing and leveraged that to refine and focus information shared publicly to ensure it was approachable and engaging.
The solution
Communications and outreach strategy
Key messages and master narrative
Collateral materials creative concept and style guidelines using San Diego County Water Authority’s existing brand
Dedicated phone and email to field questions from the public and media inquiries
Internal workshops and discovery meetings with partners
Stakeholder mapping exercise
Project information toolkit to assist partners with providing project background to stakeholders and media
Ten public community meetings and stakeholders presentation
Collateral suite including news releases, infographics, Frequently Asked Questions, fact sheet, signage, website content, enewsletter template, a meeting display boards, postcards, business cards, social media graphics and presentation template
The reward
In the early phases of outreach for the proposed project, the project team successfully achieved the goals outlined in the strategy by generating increased awareness about the project by creating outreach materials, providing website information and infographics, and holding several meetings/briefings, public meetings and presentations about the project. Since implementing the communications and outreach plan, overall awareness of the project has increased notably. The overall sentiment about the project has been overwhelmingly neutral and positive, which is viewed as a win. Many questions and concerns were raised about environmental issues resulting from potential construction and new operations at San Vicente Reservoir Project contributing a new clean energy source in San Diego. The outreach strategy was also effective in establishing the most interested and impacted stakeholders and positioning the project positively for future phases.