“In the West, of course, where water is concerned, logic and reason have never figured prominently in the scheme of things.”
— Marc Reisner, author, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
I thought of Marc Reisner the other day when I scanned a collection of news headlines concerning the ongoing crises of urban water supplies and drought that have become a sort of ambient background noise for westerners: “Dealing With Colorado River During Droughts”; “How Should Colorado River Water be Divvied?"; “Drought as the Norm?”; “Santa Cruz Gets Partner for $40 Million Desalination Plant."
Reisner’s 1986 book, Cadillac Desert, transformed the way many people viewed water and settlement in the western U.S. He artfully wove history, political analysis, personal stories, and polemic together into a portrait of a civilization perched precariously on a mostly unsuitable landscape—a society whose “very existence is premised on epic liberties taken with water.” As Wallace Stegner had done in the previous decades, Reisner called for an acknowledgement of the basic fact that the American West is dry, and for policies and practices that reflect the realities of the region rather than trying to reshape it.
I often wish Marc Reisner were here today to provide his trenchant commentary on the continuing melodrama of western water policy. Although we lost Marc prematurely to cancer in 2000, his words bear serious consideration as we face the realities of more and more people living in region in which global warming likely will exacerbate the historic patterns of highly variable precipitation. We are still a long way from achieving sustainable human settlement in the American West.
How can we bring our policies and practices into sync with the physical realities of the region? One important piece of the puzzle is the process by which we make decisions about where and how people will live on the land.
I often wish Marc Reisner were here today to provide his trenchant commentary on the continuing melodrama of western water policy.
Historically, land-use and water planning have occurred separately from one another. Water is allocated by state agencies, and land-use planning is done by local officials.
Water resource managers juggle many competing demands within a watershed, and they tend to focus on facilitating economic development. In turn, local land use authorities have safely assumed that water would be available to satisfy continued growth.
Increasingly, however, local land-use decisions run headlong into water supply concerns.
In some cases, existing uses are depleting finite water supplies, raising questions about their future reliability. For example, in some fast-growing rural areas of Arizona, recently constructed houses draw water from wells that the state engineer’s office has certified as “not reliable” due to insufficient underground supplies. Some new homeowners did not realize the tenuous nature of their water supplies and have been forced to deepen their wells or construct cisterns and pay for trucked-in water.
Elsewhere, officials are beginning to face the high social, environmental, and economic costs of obtaining water to meet rising urban demands. Urban growth around Phoenix, Denver, and Boise has been fueled by voluntary, market-based reallocation of water from farms to cities, which will continue in the future. But public outcry over Las Vegas’ long reach into rural Nevada may indicate renewed concerns over the impacts of large-scale water transfers, both on the rural communities from which the water is taken and on the pocketbooks of the consumers receiving it.
Although water itself will likely provide a hard barrier to growth only in isolated cases, the failure to connect land-use and water planning may have far-reaching and increasingly unacceptable consequences.
A recently released report by The University of Montana’s Public Policy Research Institute describes this problem as a “governance gap” — a lack of integration in decision making processes and a failure to examine and communicate the consequences of both land-use and water decisions at various levels of government.
The report provides background on the governance gap between water and land-use planning, summarizes emerging strategies to better integrate the two, and suggests options to improve land-use and water governance to address the pressures of growth while ensuring sustainable water supplies for the future.
Ideally, every major land-use decision would include consideration of where the necessary water would come from, and at what cost (economic, environmental, and social). Land use planning would be mindful of water supply constraints, and would prioritize development that is most consistent with maintaining water quality and ensuring sustainable supplies.
In turn, decisions on water planning and development would take into account the truism that growth follows new water mains and sewer systems (“build it and they will come”). Such decisions would incorporate deliberative public dialogue about long-term land-use priorities. Water suppliers would place a premium on making the best use of limited resources, minimizing demands, and ensuring that the impacts of water development on highly valued landscapes are acknowledged and taken into account before final decisions are made.
How close are we to realizing this vision? Consider these emerging strategies from around the country (all described in more detail in the policy report), most notably from water-stressed states.
Water-Conscious Land Use Planning
Water Availability Review: Before approving a proposed development, some states and municipalities require an examination of whether projected water demands can be met by existing supplies. State legislatures could facilitate integrated water and land-use planning by strengthening the requirements for a water resources element in comprehensive plans. For example, they might require that such plans identify the known supplies of water for future development, quantify the demand that would result from projected population growth, and analyze how the demand will be met by available supplies (or what additional water will have to be obtained).
Consistency Review: To integrate water and land-use planning, we may need to change state laws regarding local approval processes for development proposals. Going beyond the basic reliability of available water, such decisions should also determine whether the necessary steps to obtain water would be consistent with other land-use and environmental laws and policies. Such a review would include laws and policies governing endangered species, water quality, open space protection, and instream flow programs.
Watershed-Sensitive Planning: Planners and local government officials are increasingly addressing the watershed-wide impacts of local land-use decisions. Some examples include development setbacks to protect sensitive streams and riparian vegetation, aquifer recharge initiatives, and clustered development to minimize impervious surfaces (streets, parking lots, and other hard surfaces that prevent rainwater from flowing into the soil).
Realistic Population Projections: Local planners base their water demand projections on population forecasts. A recent study of water and land-use planning in Colorado identified the population projection process as a critical intersection of land-use and water planning. The researcher also noted this process as an unrealized opportunity to question assumptions that often lead to aggressive pursuits of water with little or no consideration of the tradeoffs of growth, alternative future scenarios, or whether residents are willing to pay for the infrastructure necessary to support projected growth.
Community-Conscious Water Planning
Collaborative Approaches: Prompted by recurring droughts, better information about historical hydrological conditions, and emerging knowledge of global climate change, water managers are beginning to explore flexible institutional arrangements to ensure water supplies in a less certain future. Interstate water banks, water leasing, drought contingency plans, and other initiatives suggest that more cooperative approaches—while not yet the norm—may provide part of the answer to regional water supply challenges and may offer new opportunities for productive dialogue.
Assessing Public Interests: Increasingly, citizen groups and other stakeholders are actively engaging with public officials to ensure protection of diverse public interests in water. Open, participatory decision processes can foster meaningful deliberation about the long-term tradeoffs and value choices inherent in water management (and water-related land-use) decisions, although this is far from the reality in most state water administrative programs.
Realistic Cost Forecasts and Pricing: Urban consumers seldom pay the full cost of the water they use. Similarly, urban suppliers historically have enjoyed considerable subsidies in water delivery systems, but this era is drawing to a close as the federal government withdraws from its dominant role as water provider. Some consumers already face steep increases in water prices to reflect the costs of building new delivery pipelines and other infrastructure. Local land and water planners could do a better job of forecasting the full cost of obtaining water to meet projected demands, and thus help citizens make more fully informed decisions about the costs of new development.
Smart Water Management: The PPRI report focuses on the governance structures—the institutions—within which public values are recognized and decisions are made about land-use and water. It is also important to consider the physical realities of water demand and supply, and to acknowledge the many initiatives already underway to better steward this limited resource. It is no longer possible to “build our way out” of complex water disputes, but we can reduce or avoid some conflicts by reducing demands and ensuring more sustainable long-term water supplies. The report describes a few examples, including water use efficiency incentives, water transfer options, conjunctive management of surface and groundwater, and desalination.
I last saw Marc Reisner at a water conference in Utah, just a year before his death. He expressed frustration over his own efforts to implement creative water management initiatives in California. He expressed strong doubt about the potential for voluntary, cooperative ventures, and called for tough-minded leadership. “Boldness and vision,” he asserted: “these are qualities which, if we ever are to solve our infinitely complex western dilemma—our arid-zone conundrum—must reassert themselves.”
Unlike the epic water projects of the past that sought to overcome nature in the arid West, the innovations of the future will arise from a more dispersed leadership among those who make daily decisions about land-use and water management in our western communities.
The solution to our dilemma goes beyond linking water and land-use planning, but we can no longer be indifferent to the environmental and other costs of developing water to meet projected needs. In taking the first step and thinking more deliberately about the consequences of growth, cities facing water supply constraints may, by default, begin to alter our course toward a more sustainable way to live in and with this landscape.
Sarah Bates Van de Wetering is a Senior Associate with the Public Policy Research Institute at The University of Montana. This essay is adapted from Bridging the Governance Gap: Strategies to Integrate Water and Land Use Planning (PPRI Collaborative Governance Report 2, 2007). She co-authored a more detailed treatment of the subject with A. Dan Tarlock: “Western Growth and Sustainable Water Use: If There Are No ‘Natural Limits,’ Should We Worry About Water Supplies?” Public Land & Resources Law Review 27:33-74 (2006). Ms. Van de Wetering has published extensively on western water and natural resource governance, including the 1990 book, Overtapped Oasis: Reform or Revolution for Western Water (Island Press), which she co-authored with Marc Reisner. |
