River Basins and Coastal Systems Planning Within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2004) / Chapter Skim
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5 Toward Integrated Water Planning and Management in River Basin and Coastal System Context
5 Toward Integrated Water Planning and Management in River Basin and Coastal System Context
Pages 115-136
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From page 115... ...
Steps that Congress and the Corps can take to improve its performance are suggested. THE CURRENT POLICY AND PROJECT ENVIRONMENT As pointed out throughout the previous chapters, water resources planning and management in a river basin and coastal system context requires an integrated approach to provide a balanced consideration of objectives and potential impacts at relevant time and space scales.
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From page 116... ...
The Corps' adoption of integrated water resources planning and management is clearly stated in its Policy Guidance Letter (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1999d)
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From page 117... ...
. Despite existing policy and planning guidance and existing authorities, the Corps' record in integrated water planning and management is inconsistent.
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From page 118... ...
This policy landscape severely reduces the nation's ability to plan and manage effective water resource projects using a systems approach. Today, water resource planning in the United States may best be described as guided by a de facto national water policy that is enunciated in legislation, administrative policy, and court decisions.
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From page 119... ...
The sum of these actions, including case law, provides guidance and constraints for water project planning and increases the emphasis placed on environmental objectives along with the traditional economic and commercial purposes of federal water resource projects. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 4, an almost unavoidable consequence of relying on such a decentralized framework is that the policies, regulations, and case law that make up the de facto policy are sometimes vague and often in conflict.
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From page 120... ...
PIECEMEAL APPROACH TO WATER PROJECT PLANNING Currently, water projects are approved by Congress on a case-by-case basis. This present project environment, in which a collaboration of local entities and Congress can exert considerable pressure for a quick and favorable project evaluation, does not support a balanced and integrated evaluation of all project benefits and costs at all necessary time and space scales.
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From page 121... ...
Integrated water resources planning and management requires adequate consideration of all relevant objectives and all potential impacts -- local, regional, and cumulative. The time and space scales for such studies cannot be specified in advance, and no simple recipe exists for defining them.
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From page 122... ...
Advocates for this change in WRDA 1986 argued that without more extensive costsharing requirements, the process of planning and executing federal water projects was biased in favor of approving many less-than-worthwhile projects. There is general agreement in the water resources community that the 1986 WRDA has significantly affected both the process by which water projects undertaken by the Corps are planned and executed and the nature and scope of projects that are funded.
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From page 123... ...
This creates a very powerful incentive for the Corps to acquire non-federal partners that will agree to cost-share planning. In fact, it is mandatory for the Corps to have already identified a prospective cost-sharing sponsor during the reconnaissance phase, and the feasibility phase cannot begin until a local sponsor signs a contract or feasibility cost-sharing agreement A negative effect of the shift toward more local cost-sharing has been the creation of subtle, but real, incentives for the Corps to focus on local projects in the absence of any river basin or coastal system master plan.
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From page 124... ...
In addition to the current requirement of developing a cost-sharing agreement with the local sponsor, the panel proposes that requirements for a reconnaissance study be amended to include the definition of those portions of the feasibility study that constitute integrated river basin or coastal system evaluation. The panel also proposes that these integrated evaluations in the feasibility phase be 100 percent federally funded because they would assess the portions of the project concerned with a broader evaluation of benefits and costs.
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From page 125... ...
The environment in which the Corps now evaluates, develops, and operates water projects is complex and includes many participants. Both the complexity of the issues considered and the number of the stakeholders involved increase when the focus of the investigation is at the scale of river basins and coastal systems, where there is a complex and conflicting mix of objectives inherent in evaluating water resources projects.
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From page 126... ...
The need to integrate ecological and socioeconomic issues with traditional water resource objectives across many federal and state agencies increases the complexity of project planning and admits a much larger number of agencies and stakeholders to the deliberations. As environmental stewardship becomes more integrated into project planning, construction, and operation, the Corps must take into account that
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From page 127... ...
The Corps' Institute for Water Resources (IWR) , established in 1969 in Alexandria, Virginia, provides software to Corps districts for water resources planning and hydrologic engineering tasks.
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From page 128... ...
However, important knowledge gaps and data needs exist. Water resources projects would be better served with more complete information in the following areas.
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From page 129... ...
Habitat modeling is a core component of the Corps' adaptive restoration plans in the Florida Everglades and the Louisiana coastal area, but most Corps districts do not have access to the data or models needed to analyze the habitat impacts of water resources projects. Moreover, data sets needed to simulate environmental change (beyond hydrology)
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From page 130... ...
report Adaptive Management for Water Resources Project Planning, the concept of adaptive management is not new, nor is it complicated. Essentially it is a management tool that is multi-disciplinary and especially useful in the natural sciences.
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From page 131... ...
For some projects, such as dam reoperation or beach nourishment, the necessary evaluation is ongoing and assesses whether the project is progressing as intended and, if necessary, informs changes in project design. Such evaluations have gained favor over the last decade as more Corps projects require performance data for adaptive management.
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From page 132... ...
The scope, timing, spatial and temporal scale, and funding for these evaluations should be determined during the feasibility study. Further review of Corps evaluation and adaptive management procedures can be found in the reports on peer review, project planning, and adaptive management that form the other parts of this NRC review of Army Corps project planning methods and procedures (NRC, 2002a, 2004a, 2004b)
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From page 133... ...
Need for Revised Planning Guidelines Fully integrated water resource planning and management requires effective guidance to determine appropriate time and space scales, and to evaluate non-commensurate objectives. Comprehensive guidance on integrated planning is not found in the current Principles and Guidelines (P&G)
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From page 134... ...
Although the P&G recognizes the need to account for such effects through the national ecosystem restoration (NER) accounts, the challenge of monetizing environmental costs and benefits of water projects has prevented the Corps from weighing these costs and benefits directly along with the traditional economic benefits identified for inclusion in the NED account.
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From page 135... ...
The current piecemeal approach to project planning and evaluation works at cross-purposes to integrated water resources management at the river basin and coastal system scale. Such planning would clearly be facilitated within an entirely new context in which a clearly stated federal water policy was implemented by a central entity with the resources and authority to carry out the necessary analyses and select the most beneficial projects.
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From page 136... ...
The actions proposed in this report would represent significant improvements within the Corps' planning environment that would raise Corps planning studies closer to the standards of integration and environmental stewardship articulated by federal regulations and Corps leadership. Effective integrated water resources planning at the scale of river basins and coastal systems requires a clear mandate, consistent guidance and standards, and capable staff who are given the opportunity to evaluate all relevant aspects of a water project with adequate data, current tools, and necessary collaboration.
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