National Water Assessment: Needed or Not?1

Abstract

A conceptual framework and the systematic collection of reliable information for application within the framework are the cornerstones of effective water planning. The ideal of strengthening these cornerstones was a driving force behind formation of the Water Resources Council and Council efforts, during its life, to develop the F'rinciples and Standards and to complete two National Water Assessments. The Assessments contained voluminous data but never really became an integral component of the national water planning process. Before being disbanded in 1982, the Council solicited several appraisals of its assessment process. This paper reports one made by the university community in which experiences and opinions were obtained from 108 water research administrators and water policy experts.The respondents judged the exercise of producing a national assessment to be useful in defining the general setting for water project, program, and research planning and for conveying needs to generalists in policy formulation roles. These applications require considerable specific information that has to be collected individually for a particular situation, but water studies are also greatly facilitated by more general setting descriptions which are better collected once than individually for each new application. A general effort has both economies of scale and provides a common basis for comparing studies. A solid data base, combining general information with a wide variety of routinely measured data, presently has a short term role in federal water program reorganization and a long term role in budgeting. The assessment should also cover the range of water problems, compare standardized data, interpret hydrologic events in terms of economic consequences and other societal goals, project trends over a reasonable planning horizon, and communicate water information to the political process. (KEY TERMS: National Water Assessment; water planning; projections; water policy; water research management; water statistics.) WATER RESOURCES BULLETIN

THE USE OF WATER RESOURCE INFORMATION: THE SECOND NATIONAL WATER ASSESSMENT1

“…Many of the criticisms of the traditional assessment process presume that the information product of assessment must be justified by its contribution to project or program-based solutions to articulated water problems, often at the local level. Indeed the recommendations of James, et a!. (1983), that the assessment focus on extreme water conditions, make longer projections, and provide statistics for less aggregated areas, were justified from the standpoint that individual projects and programs deal with extreme conditions, that 20year projections are too short given the time necessary for program development and project construction, and that aggregation of data over hydrologic subregions sacrifices the data diversity needed for effective solutions to local problems.…”

“…Despite considerable discussion regarding this topic during the past few years (Ingram, 1980;U.S. Congress, 1980;James, et aL, 1983), questions concerning the value of past assessments to water resource management and decision making remain largely unresolved. This paper reports on an analysis of use of the Second National Water Assessment by water resource managers and decision makers.…”