7913

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7913
• Author: Freshwater Society.
• Title: Water Management in Transition, 1985.
• USFW Year: 1985.
• USFW - Doc Type: Navarre, MN.
• Copyright Material: YES

Federal Water

What is new is the rising tide
of frustration with the
federal institutional
labyrinth as the nation
begins to grapple with its
worsening water problems.

Lawrence Mosher
Editor
Water Information News Service

Conflicting and overlapping authority amongfederal agencies provides
institutional barriers to effective water management. To better address
growing water problems, these interagency duplications and
disagreements need to be replaced with a coordinated process of
communication and cooperation.

"Haphazard."

This is the word the Labor-Management Group, composed of the nation's major
labor and corporate leaders, picked to describe how the nation deals with its
water resources. The result, concluded its study, Rebuilding Americas Vital
Public Facilities, is "poor management" at all levels of government,

The tough indictment, issued in October 1983, came from board chairmen and
presidents of such enterprises as Citicorp, the Bechtel Group, TR\v, Exxon,
General Motors, AT &T, General Electric, theAFL-CIO, Communications Workers
of America and the United Steelworkers of America.

The major problem, nearly everyone agrees, is the fragmented federal approach
to water, Twelve congressional committees - embracing a total of 23
subcommittees - deal with water resource issues, In the executive branch, water
is administered by a total of21 bureaucracies that live in one White House office,
two presidential advisory groups, four federal departments and five independent
agencies,

None of this is new. What is new is the rising tide of frustration with the federal
institutional labyrinth as the nation begins to grapple with its worsening water
problems.

"It is not known with certainty how many federal programs deal with water supply
and pollution," the Labor-Management Group study stated, "The Water Resources
Council (authorized by the 1965 Water Resources Planning Act as an interagency
group to coordinate planning) identified 25 federal water programs in 1974 that
were approved by Congress in 70 different appropriations accounts, Even the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not know how much the nation
spends each year on water programs."

A Lack of Coordination

The result, the study concluded, is the misallocation of "billions of dollars," a
lack of coordination between water quantity and quality programs, the failure
of water agencies to deal with the interdependence between surface water and
groundwater, and government policies that conflict with each other to discourage
water conservation,

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, has financed dozens
of sewage treatment plants that then dump effluent into the ocean instead of
recycling it. And the Interior Department continues to supply subsidized water
for Western agriculture - at prices that do little to discourage wasteful irrigation
practices.

Water is still being treated as a political boon rather than as an economic, let
alone social, asset. Rep, RobertA. Roe, (D-NJ), chairman of the Public Works and
Transportation Subcommittee on Water Resources, lamented: "There ought to
be, in the interests of the nation, just one committee that has total jurisdiction
over water resources. But that's not going to happen, The political structure won't
allow it."

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