A Review of the Proposed Revisions to the Federal Principles and Guidelines Water Resources Planning Document (2012) / Chapter Skim
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A Review of Proposed Revisions to the Federal Principles and Guidelines Water Resources Planning Document
A Review of Proposed Revisions to the Federal Principles and Guidelines Water Resources Planning Document
Pages 1-14
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Since the early 1980s there have been many changes in the national water resources planning landscape. For example, there have been increased cost-sharing requirements for local water project co-sponsors and there has been some decentralization of decision making authority in water project planning and operations.
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If the proposed revisions are to provide a document that specifies planning steps and analytical procedures, the many challenges that would attend creating a document to be uniformly applied to the large range of modern water projects -- locks and dams, levees, navigation channels, ecosystem restoration, flood risk management, watershed protection, water supply projects -- managed across an array of federal agencies, should be considered carefully. The national objective
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INTRODUCTION Since the Water Resources Council1 issued the federal Principles and Standards for Planning Water and Related Land Resources (P&S) in 1973 to guide water project evaluation, national concerns and policy emphases have evolved.
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This report represents the committee's review of the 2009 proposed revisions and offers findings and recommendations for the document's improvement. The committee's statement of task requested input regarding how the proposed revisions might accommodate emerging national water issues, and how its recommendations might benefit national water resources management.
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2) Consider how these proposed revisions accommodate relevant emerging national water issues and problems and promote better water resources decisions and projects.
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Many of today's key national water management issues lie largely outside the missions of the agencies for which the P&G was written. A partial list of prominent issues and challenges in today's national water planning context includes: Integrating floodplain management, risk management, public safety, and ecosystem values; Aging water control infrastructure and port and inland navigation facilities in many areas; Accommodating diverse stakeholder preferences in operational decisions; Integrating social and cultural values into technical aspects of water project decision making; Rapid population growth and increasing water demands; Increasing demand for water resource projects with diminishing ability to fund, as evidenced by the backlog of authorized but unfunded projects.
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For example, in the Planning Principles, it states that a recommended plan will "Provide(s) the greatest net overall contribution to the National Water Resources Planning Objectives" (p.
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Finally, it is not clear to which types of water resources management programs, studies, and water projects the proposed revisions will apply. Recommendations: The proposed revisions to the P&G should more clearly specify the agencies, programs, studies, and water projects to which it will apply.
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Including contemporary water resources planning principles within an updated Principles and Guidelines document is appropriate. However, the proposed revisions provide insufficient advice on steps for implementing all these contemporary concepts in a planning and operational setting that has changed substantially since 1983.
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STATEMENT OF NATIONAL OBJECTIVES The first paragraph of Section 3 contains two different statements of the National Objective: Federal water resources planning and development should both improve the economic well-being of the Nation for present and future generations and protect and restore the environment. The National Objective for water resources planning is to develop water resources projects based on sound science that maximize net national economic, environmental, and social benefits.
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This is consistent with the wording in WRDA 2007, Section 2031, which requires that "water resources projects are justified by public benefits", rather than requiring that project benefits exceed costs. However, the proposed revisions do not specify the role of BCA in agency decisions.
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(A) of the 2007 Water Resources Development Act requires that the P&G revision ensure the use of best available economic principles and analytical techniques.
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Examples include adaptive management, wise use of floodplains, collaboration, public safety, monetary and non-monetary considerations, sustainable economic development, sound science, ecosystem-based management, integrated water resources planning, and so on. An example can be seen on p.
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14 Finding: The proposed revisions contain many examples of vague, conflicting, and inconsistent terminology. Recommendation: In future revisions, the CEQ should more carefully present and explain broad water resources concepts.
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