RIVER BASIN WATER PLANNING ORGANIZATIONS IN THE 60's1

ABSTRACT: The 15 federal-state interagency river basin studies (designated as Type 2 or Level B in the planning program of the Water Resources Council) of the 1960's brought together in each of the study regions, in many cases for the fist time, state and federal water resources agencies, and afforded an opportunity for coordination. Examination of the studies, however, reveals that many organizational problems remain to be solved in preparing truly comprehensive plans that effectively integrate and balance the diverse values held by study participants and concerned citizens. Burgeoning changes in state and federal laws, in planning concepts, and in public attitudes influenced the studies. Increased interest in the environment and greater emphasis on a multiple objective approach to planning for example, had significant effect. The type of organization used for carrying out these studies was a coordinating committee with one of the agencies - in most cases, the Corps of Engineers, - serving as lead agency. Some of the observed weaknesses of this arrangement were the lack of an effective mechanism for screening individual agency project proposals; unbalanced participation of agencies - for example, construction vs. non-construction, state vs. federal; agency representatives without sufficient delegated authority; insufficient control of the planning organization over individual agency participation and punctuality; and lack of emphasis on plan formulation and public participation. Suggested improvements, some of which are already being implemented in more recent studies include centralized planning staff and funding, formalized work agreements, a dynamic and continuous planning process with mechanisms for monitoring technological and social changes and evaluating planning effectiveness, planning guidelines and evaluative criteria, and a formalized training program for planners.     

Disciplined Planning,Structured Participation,and Collaborative Modeling — Applying Shared Vision Planning to Water Resources

Participatory planning applied to water resources has sparked significant interest and debate during the last decade. Recognition that models play a significant role in the formulation and implementation of design and management strategies has encouraged the profession to consider how such models can be best implemented. Shared Vision Planning (SVP) is a disciplined planning approach that combines traditional water resources planning methodologies with innovations such as structured public participation and the use of collaborative modeling, resulting in a more complete understanding and an integrative decision support tool. This study reviews these three basic components of SVP and explains how they are incorporated into a unified planning approach. The successful application of SVP is explored in three studies involving planning challenges: the National Drought Study, the Lake Ontario‐St. Lawrence River Study, and the Apalachicola‐Chattahoochee‐Flint/Alabama‐Coosa‐Tallapoosa River Basin Study. The article concludes by summarizing the advantages and limitations of this planning approach.     

Landcare Networks in Australia: State-sponsored Participation Through Local Organizations

Landcare is an Australian success story and an important example of the potential of state-sponsored community participation. An important trend encouraged by the lead agencies is for Landcare groups to be linked through so-called networks. Linking together may appeal to groups as a way of increasing their capacity to compete for scarce resources and enhance their impact on agencies, regional catchment committees and government. Network formation is also driven by government and agency demands for efficiency, accountability and effective regional planning. In this paper the authors draw on their 1997 study of the Ovens Valley Landcare Network in Victoria. This research suggested networks are important local organisations and enhance the impact of groups by improving inter-group communication and 'pulling down' resources. Network processes also contributed to robust, productive, agency-community partnerships and suggested participation can increase community influence on decision making and be compatible with adaptive management.     

Reconceptualizing water management in Khorezm,Uzbekistan

The Khorezm region is located in the northwest of Uzbekistan, approximately 350 km from the current shore of the Aral Sea. It comprises a large‐scale irrigation system that conveys water from the river Amu Darya to agricultural land cropped mainly with cotton, wheat, and rice. Khorezm's water resources are vulnerable as they depend on upstream developments and are indispensable to rural livelihoods and state budgets. Since water scarcity is expected to increase in the future, sustainable water management is a necessity. Hence, the objectives of the paper are to: (1) conceptualize the distinctive features of water management in Khorezm; (2) provide an integrated analysis of water management by establishing linkages between society, technical infrastructure, and the bio‐physical environment; and (3) make policy and technology recommendations for improved water management. To conceptualize water management in Khorezm, the paper distinguishes three types of practices: formal practices, strategic practices, and discursive practices. Based on these, it presents an analysis of water management on the state water management level, the water user association level, and the farmer and field level. For each level, recommendations are given. The paper concludes that elements of integrated water resources management (IWRM) such as transparency, accountability, participation, and technical efficiency are relevant to improve water management in Khorezm, as elsewhere. In addition, it underlines the need to create legal space for agency and innovation. Technical tools such as models are increasingly important for facilitating transparency and enabling agents to access and make use of information across the management hierarchy.     

水生态环境保护回顾与展望：从污染防治到三水统筹

水生态环境保护事关美丽中国目标的实现。本文阐释了我国从水污染防治向水环境、水生态、水资源“三水”统筹转变的新时代水生态环境保护内涵，从国内视角梳理我国水污染防治实践取得的成效，识别美丽中国水生态环境保护面临的制约性问题，首次在全国层面与欧美发达国家的水环境质量、水生态保护和水资源保障情况进行国际对标分析，提出以水生态系统保护目标为指引、以流域生态环境空间管控为基础、以“三水”统筹系统治理为路径、以治理体系和治理能力现代化为保障的水生态环境保护战略建议。     

PLANNERS AS A PUBLIC IN WATER RESOURCES PUBLIC PARTICIPATION PROGRAMS1

This paper suggests a number of benefits in identifying urban and regional planners as a public in public participation programs of water resources planning studies. A perspective on public participation is presented. Recent trends and developing concepts are identified: emphasis on the need to coordinate urban and regional planning activities with water resources planning, increasing system complexity, the goals and objectives orientation of planning, planning for multi-objectives, the evaluation of a broader range of alternatives, and the consideration of water alternatives as only one set of measures to further society's aspirations. One way to assist in capitalizing on these trends is to seek out participation of those in other planning efforts who are involved in planning but on a different level. Because of their intimate knowledge of an areas history, growth and development, political climate, local perceptions of needs and desires, and major problems and issues they are able to contribute a great deal of insight in making the water resources planning effort more responsive at the local level. The paper describes one of the first major efforts at working-level public-planner contact which was carried out as part of the Susquehanna River Basin Study. A regional survey team comprised of an engineer and an economist from a federal agency and a state water resources planner met informally with planners, city managers, and local planning commissions to discuss issues related to water resources and the growth and development of local areas. This effort while only part of the overall public participation program yielded a number of benefits and if expanded and refined would be a very useful experience in other studies.     

A SYSTEMS RESOURCES APPROACH TO CITIZEN PARTICIPATION: THE CASE OF THE CORPS OF ENGINEERS1

ABSTRACT: The thesis of this paper is that the citizen participation process provides necessary, but not sufficient conditions to affect substantive change in federal water resource management agencies' planning and decisionmaking. That is, in its present form, the citizen participation process has been observed to occur outside of the normal decision arenas of federal resource management agencies. The paper reviews concepts of citizen participation and defines some theoretical problems inherent with them. Then, a strategy for the structuring of a citizen participation process is proposed. This strategy is based upon the notion that citizen support for federally sponsored programs are essential if such projects are to be implemented. Therefore, an approach which integrates citizen valves with those held by other institutions and the agency is suggested. In conclusion, the relevancy of actively developing and including citizen input to the water resource planning process is illustrated by a discussion of three cases of the Corps of Engineers and Urban Studies planning process, in different metropolitan regions.     

THE ACCURACY OF WATER USE FORECASTS: EVALUATION AND IMPLICATIONS1

ABSTRACT: Forecasts of 1980 river basin water use presented in the reports of the 1960 Senate Select Committee on National Water Resources and in the Water Resources Council's First National Water Assessment of 1968 were compared to estimates of actual use in 1980 to assess the accuracy of efforts to forecast future water use. Results show that the majority of the forecasts were substantially in error. In general, the First National Assessment forecasts erred by a smaller margin, but tended to repeat the regional patterns of overestimation (underestimation) exhibited in the Senate Select Committee forecasts. Moreover, forecasts of the two groups that came within 20 percent of the 1980 withdrawals, in general were accurate, not because of superior prediction, but because of offsetting errors in forecast components. This performance leads us to conclude that water use forecasts, regardless of the time-frame or the forecast method employed, are likely to always be highly inaccurate. Accordingly, if such forecasting efforts are to be of value in contemporary water resources planning, forecasters should direct their attention toward methods which will illuminate the determinants of the demand for water.     

APPLICATION OF CRITICAL PATH METHOD TO WATER RESOURCES PLANNING1

ABSTRACT. The task of resource management, in this case water resources, is rapidly becoming more complex, particularly because decision making is often contingent upon various prior activities and sets of data. Comprehensive planning is required in order to prevent misallocation of resources or mismanagement in resource development. Such planning involves five general phases which are applicable to any problem faced by society: (1) problem identification; (2) formulation of alternatives; (3) evaluation of alternatives; (4) implementation; (5) review. There have been many attempts to simplify the planning process and effectively carry out these five phases. The experience of the Alberta Water Resources Division has been that the Critical Path Method is one of the most useful tools available today for planning. It involves two basic steps: (1) preparation of a network diagram which (a) identifies all the activities necessary for the completion of a project, (b) correctly sequences these activities, (c) allocates resources; and (2) mathematical computations for scheduling the activities. In other words, this approach breaks a task down into smaller units or activities for easier organization, scheduling, and performance for eventual completion of the project. This paper will illustrate the effectiveness of the Critical Path Method by discussing its application to actual water resources projects.     

STATE WATER QUALITY CONTROL PROGRAM IN ARIZONA1

ABSTRACT: Arizona's water pollution control program is based on authorties of Arizona Revised Statutes and Public Law 92–500, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. The primary areas of this program are monitoring, facility inspections, plan review, planning, discharge permits and grants for the construction of publicly-owned waste water treatment facilities. The discharge permit program deals with control of point-source discharges and is administered by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The planning and construction grants programs are administered by the State Water Quality Control Council and are implemented by the Bureau of Water Quality Control, which serves as staff to the Council. There are several challenges that face the State in this program. First is the adaptation of the “eastern law” to deal with Arizona's water quality problems. Second is to address problems caused by a long history of “laissez-faire” environmental quality management. Third is a mutual cooperation and coordination among the many entities involved in water resources management. Areas of particular interest in the State's program is the process setting water quality standards and the involvement of people of diversified backgrounds in the field of areawide planning under Section 208 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which is primarily concerned with non-point sources of water pollution.     

Temporal Trends in the Spatial Distribution of Impervious Cover Relative to Stream Location

Use of impervious cover is transitioning from an indicator of surface water condition to one that also guides and informs watershed planning and management, including Clean Water Act (33 U.S.C. §1251 et seq.) reporting. Whether it is for understanding surface water condition or planning and management, impervious cover is most commonly expressed as summary measurement (e.g., percentage watershed in impervious cover). We use the National Land Cover Database to estimate impervious cover in the vicinity of surface waters for three time periods (2001, 2006, 2011). We also compare impervious cover in the vicinity of surface waters to watershed summary estimates of impervious cover for classifying the spatial pattern of impervious cover. Between 2001 and 2011, surface water shorelines (streams and water bodies) in the vicinity of impervious cover increased nearly 10,000 km. Across all time periods, approximately 27% of the watersheds in the continental United States had proximally distributed impervious cover, i.e., the percentage of impervious cover in the vicinity of surface waters was higher than its watershed summary expression. We discuss how impervious cover spatial pattern can be used to inform watershed planning and management, including reporting under the Clean Water Act.     

CHICAGO METROPOLITAN FLOODWATER MANAGEMENT PLAN1

ABSTRACT: The Chicago Metropolitan Floodwater Management Plan is a cooperative planning program under Public Law 566 of the 83rd Congress (The Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act). The planning effort was jointly sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, and the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago. The project is unique in that it studies a 1260 square mile (3266 sq. kilometer) watershed, which is approximately 35 percent urbanized and contains approximately 7.5 million people. At present, approximately 4.4 percent or 330,600 people live in a floodplain. It is presently estimated that 80,000 acres (32,000 ha.) of the study area are subject to flooding with a current average annual damage estimated at approximately $10 million. The Plan which has been developed to reduce or eliminate these damages is divided into six separate watershed plans, and has been developed through extensive use of local citizen watershed steering committees. The paper discusses the planning process, public participation and implementation both at an overall river basin level and watershed case study level.     

RATES,RIGHTS, AND REGIONAL PLANNING IN THE METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA1

ABSTRACT: The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has for more than 70 years shaped the development of an immense urban region. The district's current strategic planning process therefore could have substantial effects on regional water planning and management. The rate restructuring phase of the planning process has produced a multiple component, cost of service based framework. This paper describes that framework as well as some criticisms that have been directed toward it. The rate restructuring was shaped, and for a while stalled, by old disputes among member agencies over rights to water supplied by Metropolitan. That controversy has diverted attention from the resource management implications of the rate structure. This paper presents an alternative future focused approach to regional integrated water resource planning for Southern California based on projections of current trends and anticipation of future events. This discussion raises the question of how regional integrated water resources planning of this sort may proceed, and what role Metropolitan will play in that process.     

Water Prism: A Tool to Assess Water Availability Risk and Investigate Water Management Strategies

Water availability risk is a local issue best understood with watershed‐scale quantification of both withdrawal and consumptive demands in the context of available supply. Collectively, all water use sectors must identify, understand, and respond to this risk. A highly visual and computationally robust decision support tool, Water Prism, quantitatively explores mitigation responses to water risk on both a facility‐level and basin‐aggregated basis. Water Prism examines a basin water balance for a 40‐ to 60‐year planning horizon, distinguishes among water use sectors, and accounts for ecosystem water needs. The 2012 Texas State Water Plan was used to apply Water Prism to the Big Cypress‐Sulphur Basin (Texas). The case study showed Water Prism to be an accurate and convenient tool to provide fine‐scale understanding of water use in the context of available supply, evaluate multi‐sector combinations of conservation strategies, and quantify the effects of future demands and water availability. Analyses demonstrated water availability risks for rivers and reservoirs can vary within a basin and must be calculated independently, simulation of water balance conditions can help illuminate potential impacts of increasing demands, and scenario simulations can be used to evaluate relative conservation efficacy of different water resource management strategies for each sector. Based on case study findings, Water Prism can serve as a useful assessment tool for regional water planners.     

Traditional pastoralist decision-making processes: lessons for reforms to water resources management in Kenya

The purpose of this paper is to consider the vision for public participation in water resources management embedded in Kenya's 2002 Water Act, as it relates to pastoralists. The Act envisions that responsibility for management of water resources at the local level will be devolved to community-level bodies. Our approach was qualitative and included interviews with government officials and Gabra pastoralists, observation of and participation in traditional Gabra korra meetings and focus group discussions. We conclude that the ‘institutional model’ of participation being pursued through the creation of Water Resource User Associations is particularly problematic for mobile pastoralists such as the Gabra, and we suggest an alternative strategy that would focus on the fostering of deliberation processes.     

CREATING MEANINGFUL STAKEHOLDER INVOLVEMENT IN WATERSHED PLANNING IN PIERCE COUNTY,WASHINGTON1

ABSTRACT: Since 1989, the government of Pierce County, Washington, has prepared four watershed action plans. The watersheds cover almost 800,000 acres and include about 600,000 residents and diverse land uses, from the city of Tacoma to Mount Rainier National Park. The primary purpose of these plans was to address water quality impacts from nonpoint sources of pollution and to protect beneficial uses of water. Pierce County has experienced problems such as shellfish bed closures and the Federal Clean Water Act Section 303(d) listing of local water bodies as a result of declining water quality. Pierce County achieved improvements by engaging diverse groups of stakeholders in generating solutions to nonpoint sources of water pollution through our watershed planning process. Using participatory methods borrowed from private industry, Pierce County was able to reach consensus, build trust, maximize participation, facilitate learning, encourage creativity, develop partnerships, shorten time frames for the planning processes, and increase the level of commitment participants had to implementing the plans. As a result, the earliest plans have a high rate of voluntary implementation. This indicates that the process and methodology used to develop watershed plans has a significant, if not critical, impact on their success.     

WATER USE RELATIONSHIPS AND PROJECTION CORRESPONDING WITH REGIONAL GROWTH,SEATTLE REGION1

ABSTRACT: The paper outlines both the methods used and the results obtained in a study of the demand for municipal and industrial water for the Seattle region. The study was made as part of a regional water management study program, one objective of which is to “… identify, quantify, and set priorities for all current and future water uses …”. A basic concept in the study of municipal and industrial water use is that the demand for water is derived from the demand for output and the direct services that water provides. Principal characteristics of the study are: (1) Water use is studied by type - residential, commercial, industrial and public -with identification of factors affecting each; (2) Water demands are studied by season as well as on an annual basis; (3) Projections of future water use are tied directly to projections of economic change in the service area; and (4) The effects of alternative policies on water use are estimated. Water use levels are projected under alternative regional growth assumptions provided by the Puget Sound Governmental Conference, a regional planning agency. Thus, the water use planning is consistent with other regional planning programs in this respect. The results can be varied according to changes in specific factors affecting water use. The factors considered in the present study include: single-family residential lot size, distribution of population between single- and multi-family units, per capita water use by multi-family unit residents, and industrial and commercial water use per employee. An income elasticity of demand was estimated for single-family residential water use.     

System Dynamics to Sustainable Water Resources Management in the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer Under Water Supply Uncertainty1

Abstract: Water supply uncertainty continues to threaten the reliability of regional water resources in the western United States. Climate variability and water dispute potentials induce water managers to develop proactive adaptive management strategies to mitigate future hydroclimate impacts. The Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer in the state of Idaho is also facing these challenges in the sense that population growth and economic development strongly depend on reliable water resources from underground storage. Drought and subsequent water conflict often drive scientific research and political agendas because water resources availability and aquifer management for a sustainable rural economy are of great interest. In this study, a system dynamics approach is applied to address dynamically complex problems with management of the aquifer and associated surface‐water and groundwater interactions. Recharge and discharge dynamics within the aquifer system are coded in an environmental modeling framework to identify long‐term behavior of aquifer responses to uncertain future hydrological variability. The research shows that the system dynamics approach is a promising modeling tool to develop sustainable water resources planning and management in a collaborative decision‐making framework and also to provide useful insights and alternative opportunities for operational management, policy support, and participatory strategic planning to mitigate future hydroclimate impacts in human dimensions.     

The Achievement of a Decentralized Water Management Through Stakeholder Participation: An Example from the Drôme River Catchment Area in France (1981–2008)

Different water Acts (e.g., the European Water Framework Directive) and stakeholders involved in aquatic affairs have promoted integrated river basin management over recent decades. However, few studies have provided feedback on these policies. The aim of the current article is to fill this gap by exploring how local newspapers reflect the implementation of a broad public participation within a catchment of France known for its innovation with regard to this domain. The media coverage of a water management strategy in the Drôme watershed from 1981 to 2008 was investigated using a content analysis and a geographic information system. We sought to determine what public participation and decentralized decision-making can be in practice. The results showed that this policy was integrated because of its social perspective, the high number of involved stakeholders, the willingness to handle water issues, and the local scale suitable for participation. We emphasized the prominence of the watershed scale guaranteed by the local water authority. This area was also characterized by compromise, arrangements, and power dynamics on a fine scale. We examined the most politically engaged writings regarding water management, which topics of each group emphasized, and how the groups agreed and disagreed on issues based on their values and context. The temporal pattern of participation implementation was progressive but worked by fits and starts.