A colleague recently sent me a copy of the Sustainable Watershed Planning Act, a bill that may be considered by the U.S. House of Representative’s Water Resources and the Environment Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I say “may be” because the bill does not yet have a number and the copy I have posted here is a work in progress that is being circulated among staffers. Hearings have not been scheduled because the staff wants more input.

Download Draft Sustainable Watershed Planning Act EJS_138_xml 061209

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) is the chair; Rep. John Boozman (R-AR) is the ranking member.  Here are the subcommittee members.

One of the interesting facets of the proposed bill is that it creates a Cabinet-level council and an Executive Office agency, the Office of Sustainable Watershed Management, with a presidentially-appointed Director.

Sounds similar to the defunded Water Resources Council with a ‘Water Czar’ added for good measure. Leo Eisel, wherefore art thou? [Brown and Caldwell in Denver - give him a call].

The bill would mandate regional water boards that would produce five-year plans. The Director would be responsible for, among other things, “carrying out the policies and programs of the federal government affecting sustainable water resources management.” S/he would have very broad responsibilities with tasks that would extend far beyond the office.  

Here are some quotes from Taryn Luntz’s recent (7 August 2009) E & E News article (former AWRA President Gerry Galloway is quoted):

At present, several regions of the country face significant water resource challenges ranging from droughts in the Southeast and Southwest to the recent flooding in the Midwest,” Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) said. “Watershed planning and management can be an important tool to help make better decisions in resolving these water resource needs.”

Ranking member John Boozman (R-Ark.) said Congress should consider devising a way for the federal government to provide technical assistance and guidance to state and local water planning efforts.

“More and more often we are seeing growing cities’ needs for municipal and industrial water supplies at odds with similar needs for that same water downstream,” Boozman said. “It conflicts with environmental, recreation, navigation or flood control needs elsewhere in the watershed. What has been missing in most cases is a comprehensive watershed plan against which more focused local feasibility plans can be measured.”

I am assuming that Johnson is ‘bluer’ than Boozman, but you wouldn’t know it from their statements. They say that politics makes strange bedfellows; apparently, so does water these days. To me, that’s great; sound water management should not be a “red vs. blue” issue.

So is this proposed legislation potentially good, bad, or ugly? Based on my quick perusal, my esteemed opinions follow.

Good:

• Encourages collaborative regional approach.
• Supposedly does not tread upon states’ water prerogatives.

Bad:

• What about groundwater underlying more than one watershed planning region?
• What about local agencies (counties, municipalities) with land-use planning responsibilities? 
• Need to have Federal water agency coordination – unclear that the bill really addresses this.
• Director’s duties rely heavily on cooperation from other Federal agencies.
• Nonrenewable groundwater needs to be considered.

Ugly:

• Definition of “sustainable”?  Economically? Environmentally? Socially?
• Finding a director worth his/her salt willing to wear a ‘DC power suit’ to work.
• How do you deal with ‘virtual watersheds’? Consider the case of Southern California, whose watershed ‘boundaries’ extend into Northern California and also include the Colorado River Basin. 

If this bill is passed, the real key will be how it is implemented. Even though this is a top-down initiative, a bottom-up approach is the only way for it to work.  

This proposed bill is a good sign.

A minor edit: since ‘groundwater’ is now one word, the correct phrase is ‘surface water and groundwater’, not ‘surface and groundwater. ‘

I am curious to see how this will interface with Rep. John Linder’s (R-GA) proposed development of a Comprehensive Integrated Water Policy.

 “And which of the 30 defintions of ‘sustainability’ are you invoking today?” – UNM economist David Brookshire, whenever I would throw out the term ‘sustainability’