The U.S. EPA and most water resources professionals advocate holistic and adaptive watershed management approaches to the protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems by encouraging pollution control strategies that are developed through collaborative partnerships within a hydrologic boundary. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the holistic adaptive management approach through a case study where the principles of watershed-based management and permitting have been practiced for over

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... welve years. Measuring the success of a holistic approach to watershed management is demonstrated through the presentation of monitoring data collected for the Rouge River watershed. KEYWORDS Holistic and adaptive watershed management, stormwater permit, watershed-based permit, trend analysis, water quality, flow, Rouge River National Wet Weather Demonstration Project.