Training Our Leaders

Water Watchers runs trainings for grassroots leaders working on water, environmental, and social justice issues in their communities. Trainings include introductions to core campaign organizing principles, community mobilization, meaningfully embedding Indigenous solidarity, and designing strategic interventions to win for people and planet. 

Training Offerings

Amplifying Local Issues

Beyond trainings, we offer grassroots movements access to our digital advocacy tools to help local leaders reach their community and streamline the process for reaching key decision-makers. We also amplify local actions to our network to supercharge the grassroots movements working on the frontlines of water justice issues around the Great Lakes.

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Supporting Campaigns

Water Watchers' expert campaign advisement and support services help clarify goals, strategies, and tactics to ensure campaigns are reaching the right people at the right time in the most impactful way. Whether it's at a critical juncture in a campaign or a group is just not having success reaching key decision-makers on their issue, we can give your campaign new life.

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Say No to Proposed Lichty Gravel Pit

For nearly 30 years, Peter and Nicki Hettinga dreamed of finding a place where they could live quietly, close to nature, and build a future for their family. They found it on 50 acres in Centre Wellington, a place with three streams, three forests, Provincially Significant Wetlands and a home they renovated themselves. It was a sanctuary for Nicki and her husband, and their son who is on the autism spectrum and is highly sensitive to noise. Then came news of a proposed gravel pit less than 120 metres from their home, and shortly afterward, Peter was diagnosed with blood cancer. From his hospital bed, he continued to fight and wrote a 26-page submission to the Ministry of Natural Resources outlining why the proposed Lichty gravel pit was the wrong project in the wrong place. Peter passed away in June 2025. He never received a response.

Today, Nicki and the Cox Creek Environmental Alliance (CCEA) are still fighting this industrial threat that looms at 5999 & 6043 Eighth Line East and 7190 Sideroad 12 in Centre Wellington. Cox Creek is a cold-water headwater that flows into the Grand River watershed, feeding communities across a wide stretch of Ontario. The land around it — Core Greenlands, Provincially Significant Wetlands, prime agricultural farmland — is among the most protected in the province and this proposed gravel pit aims to scar a landscape defined by its ecological fragility and flood-prone waters, sacrificing prime agricultural soil for extraction. If approved, the quiet of local farms, schools and hiking trails will be replaced by the persistent intrusion of heavy trucks, toxic dust and industrial noise.

We do not need this pit, and we cannot afford what it will cost us.

You can help Cox Creek, the plants and animals of this watershed, and Nicki's family by taking action today to contact Centre Wellington and Wellington County officials to Say No to the Lichty Pit.

Take action here!