Dysfunctional Water Management: Causes and Solutions

Water is an increasingly precious but still poorly managed resource. There is no need to repeat the litany of ways in which water is vital to the survival of human society and the ecosystems on which we depend. Nor is it necessary to describe in detail how the needs for water, both real and perceived, have changed dramatically, particularly over the course of the last century. Yet the practice of water resources management falls abysmally short of the state of the art. Why? What are the obstacles we face? What can we, as water professionals, do about it? I believe that the single largest obstacle is simple inertia—both a reluctance to change the way things are done because those ways have not failed dramatically in the past and an obsession with maintaining the status quo in terms of resource allocation. Reluctance to change is not entirely misguided; mistakes in water management can be very costly. But so are the consequences of maintaining the status quo. We cannot adapt to the dramatic changes in needs for water and in climate-change-induced water availability while maintaining the status quo in the way we manage water. In some cases, legal requirements exist to compensate those whose property rights in, or benefits from, water and related resources are diminished; in many cases they do not. Worse, in many cases there is no legal avenue to provide compensation for benefits lost. This leads those who feel they might lose to defend the status quo to the death—almost literally. Add to this the misperception that the allocation of the benefits of water management is a fixed-sum game i.e., if someone gets something, all other beneficiaries must lose something , and changing the status quo becomes very difficult. There are other obstacles as well: the basic structure of water management in the United States is simply counterproductive. When we understand the reasons why the current system is failing us, we can use that understanding to propose rational and realistic reforms. Our current slavish devotion to maintaining the status quo is a recipe for disaster.