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EDITORIAL <br />It's Time for Standards of Practice in Water <br />Resources Planning <br />JOURNAL OF WATER RESOURCES PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT �O ASCE / <br />JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 / Vol 134, No. 1, pp 1-2 <br />William J. Werick, P.E. <br />14508 Chesterfield Ln. Culpeper, VA 22701. E-mail: bwerick@ <br />hughes.net <br />Richard N. Palmer, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE <br />University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105-2700. E-mail: palmer@ <br />u.washington.edu <br />Fifteen years ago, we formalized a disciplined planning approach <br />that we termed Shared Vision Planning. Although we found it <br />immediately beneficial in our planning studies, we wondered <br />whether what we had invented would be short-lived. Perhaps we <br />had invented the water management equivalent of the IBM Selectric? <br />For those readers under the age of 50, the Selectric was an <br />amazingly advanced electric typewriter that was invented about <br />20 years before the first Apple computer. It turns out that we need <br />not have worried; the consequences of not planning adequately <br />are now headline news, so the idea of disciplined planning— <br />considering the consequences of a decision before it is made—has <br />a renewed luster. We worry, though, that today's planners are <br />unaware of the planning accomplishments of the past. The fact <br />that much has changed since the 1970s does not mean that previous <br />knowledge is worthless, only that the old lessons must be <br />updated if they are to serve as modern templates for water resource <br />planning. <br />The Water Resources Council established rules for federal <br />planning 30 years ago. In 1973 the Council produced Water and <br />Related Land Resources: Establishment of Principles and Standards <br />for Planning _P&S_ _U.S. Water Resources Council 1973_. <br />The P&S integrated federal guidelines from the 1950s, the systems <br />and economic analysis approaches of the Harvard Water <br />Program from the 1950s and 1960s, and lessons learned from two <br />major water planning studies conducted as a result of droughts in <br />the northeast in the mid-1960s. The P&S was subjected to review <br />and comment in the Federal Register before being issued in final <br />form. This open debate ensured that the final P&S was representative <br />of the state of the practice. An apprentice planner in the late <br />