It’s Time for Standards of Practice in Water Resources Planning

Abstract

Fifteen years ago, we formalized a disciplined planning approach that we termed Shared Vision Planning. Although we found it immediately beneficial in our planning studies, we wondered whether what we had invented would be short-lived. Perhaps we had invented the water management equivalent of the IBM Selectric? For those readers under the age of 50, the Selectric was an amazingly advanced electric typewriter that was invented about 20 years before the first Apple computer. It turns out that we need not have worried; the consequences of not planning adequately are now headline news, so the idea of disciplined planning— considering the consequences of a decision before it is made—has a renewed luster. We worry, though, that today’s planners are unaware of the planning accomplishments of the past. The fact that much has changed since the 1970s does not mean that previous knowledge is worthless, only that the old lessons must be updated if they are to serve as modern templates for water resource planning. The Water Resources Council established rules for federal planning 30 years ago. In 1973 the Council produced Water and Related Land Resources: Establishment of Principles and Standards for Planning PS and for every study labeled shared vision planning, two or three others use an essentially similar approach but not the label . Now is an excellent time to assemble the