Got Water?
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Now, I'm neither a scientist, nor an engineer, nor anything remotely similar to either of the above. Once we got past the planaria in Biology 101, I could never find whatever it was we were supposed to be analyzing on that microscope slide. (I'm not proud of this: it's simply the stark, unvarnished truth.) But even to a layperson, these Viewmaster shots of the extreme water issues facing the United States in the summer of 2008—random as they may seem—suggest a panoramic picture of the state of water resources management in this country. In four words, it is sheer chaos.
Still Floundering After All These Years
It would be easy, even tempting, to blame the turbulent state of the nation's water affairs on the Bush administration. Certainly, they've provided ample cause: gutting, and failing to enforce, the Clean Water Act, for instance, and, at best, simply ignoring the obvious problems of floods, droughts, and hurricanes, of shifting weather patterns, of contaminants old and new, and a myriad of other water disasters through eight long years.
The truth is, though, that scientists, engineers, and environmental planners have been advising Congress for years that holistic watershed management is the only rational and practical way to address complex water quality and quantity issues. Why that persistent recommendation? As Delaware River Basin Commission Executive Director Carol Collier told the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment on June 24th, bodies of water don't respect political boundaries; we have to manage them "on the rivers' terms." And the stakeholders from both riverbanks—as well as from up and downstream—all need to be at the table. Notwithstanding this long-term chorus of expert advice, our elected officials have merrily continued to legislate piecemeal, funding billions of dollars of local water-related projects without regard to their overall value or impact.
Tragically, as it turns out, faced with the urgent need to change our management of U.S. waters, Congress has, for decades, been standing "up on the watershed"—just as in the Indigo Girls song—and they've been floundering. But you can't say it hasn't been a bipartisan effort.
Although the witnesses at the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee hearing were decidedly nonpartisan, the testimony of each and every one made this fact abundantly, even painfully, clear. They were all measured and polite, of course, but you didn't have to be Karnac the Magnificent to sense the frustration.
Consider, for example, the testimony of Larry Larson, the Executive Director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. He began: "Once again we are seeing devastating floods in the Midwest—likely billions in losses to farms, homes, businesses and infrastructure." Then, he ticked off some causes: population growth, migration, climate changes, degradation of water-based resources, deteriorating infrastructures, encouraging wetlands-draining and crop growth on marginal land, addressing water quality but not quantity, over-reliance on dams and levees to prevent floods.
His conclusion?
"Without dramatic shifts in our approaches and actions, by 2050 flood losses are likely to be far greater, ecosystems may well collapse, the nation's quality of life will be diminished, and all hope of sustainable communities will be lost."
Not long after that cheery forecast, there was Paul Freedman, Vice President of the Water Environment Federation and President of LimnoTech, an Ann Arbor-based water consulting firm. While preparing his presentation, he said, he had recognized some irony:
"Twelve years ago this month, I co-chaired one of the earliest and largest watershed conferences ever to occur. [The Water Environment Federation] organized it jointly with fifteen federal agencies. Well over a thousand experts participated and more than five thousand participated through videoconference… At the time it was kind of this aha moment, you know, we'd made enormous progress since the Clean Water Act of 1972, but further progress toward restoring the physical, chemical and biologic health of our water resources, and protecting public health and well-being was stalled."Everyone agreed there, watershed management was the only answer to take us into the twenty-first century."
Of course, that particular aha moment occurred in 1996. But University of Maryland Professor of Engineering Gerald Galloway—a retired U.S. Army Brigadier General who was the 2007 President of the American Water Resources Association—had a similar one in 1994.
After floods in 1993 had devastated many of the same Mississippi River towns that were once again inundated on June 24, 2008, he led an interagency team to study the complex problem of floodplain management. And, unsurprisingly, his team concluded that the United States should abandon its project-by-project approach to water resources. Not only, they pointed out, does such fragmented funding lead to ineffective, sometimes conflicting results, it actually forecloses possibilities for cooperation by, and among, federal agencies. As Galloway noted, "If you don't have the money, it's awfully hard to come to the party."
We could rewind to even earlier aha moments. On February 17, 1952, for example, a New York Times headline reads, "Bill Asks Policy for River Basins: President's Commission Files Draft that Sums Up its Plan for Water Resources." The President in question was Harry Truman and the plan was, according to the article, "based solidly on the commission's original and far-reaching premise that entire river basins must be considered in one broad and uniform policy." In 1933, of course, the United States formed the Tennesee Valley Authority to execute a model comprehensive, collaborative approach to the water and power issues in that region. It has been, in Galloway's words, a "shining example"—albeit one rarely followed.
Words of the Day
In the end, when it came to an assessment of the current state of our national water policy, there were precious few positive sentiments voiced at the hearing. Instead, the most often-used descriptions were alarmingly negative.
As applied to programs and projects, the words of the day included fractured, ad hoc, isolated, random, haphazard, inconsistent, stovepiped, and mish-mash. Relative to congressional committees and federal agencies, the term was hodge-podge. Larry Larson testified that there are a grand total of 36 congressional subcommittees that oversee water-related issues in some fashion or another—with few clearly-delineated divisions of authority.
