Operationalizing the allocation of environmental flows: A U.K. perspective on Baxter's Schedule

Abstract

AbstractEarly attempts to gauge streams were used by George Baxter in 1961 to propose a pioneering scheme for deriving and allocating water for what today may be recognized as environmental flows in the United Kingdom, but the approach was not accepted into practice. A fundamental concern was the quality of river flow data. Stream gauging was advanced by the 1963 Water Resources Act, and prior to this, the allocation of water resources to compensation flows below dams was based on the basic principle of one third of the reliable yield, estimated using rainfall data. Despite the increased availability of river flow data since the 1970s, it is suggested that low‐flow data quality has severely constrained the management and allocation of water resources and remains so today. Today, pressures and demands on water resources are increasing, but the accuracy of low‐flow measurement is still hindering the operational determination and implementation of environmentally robust, seasonally variable environmental flows. Successful river regulation and restoration relate to a complex suite of public policy questions and given uncertainty over the quality of low‐flow data, transparent, pragmatic decisions about societal allocations of water need to be made.