The Politics of Watershed Policymaking

In 1996, we began a study of contrasting efforts to restore and enhance watershed health in three different river basins. While we were organizing our study, one of the watershed groups that we were examining “fell apart,” therebey providing us with an unusual opportunity of study the difference between organizational success and failure. Obviously there are many problems in brawing broad conciusions from the study of a few cases, and we are well aware of those limits. Nonetheless, this paper's focus is on what can be learned about this failed attempt at watershed planning and organizing. We do this by combining descriptive case materials and evidence drawn from surveys of participating members of watershed organizations. We first describe the gerneral challenges to watershed policymaking. Second, with a focus on the decline of wild salmon in the Pacific Nortwest, including California, we briefly characterize our case studies of watershed organization that exist in three river systems—the Yakima River (in cenral Washington) and the Santa Ynez and Sacramento Rivers in California. In both of these stes, watershed organizations are the primary architects of watershed policymaking. Third, we present an analysis of survey results, emphasizing a search for whether the views of participants in the “failing” case of watershed organization differ from those of participants in the ongoing cases.