WSP04710

• File Number: 8056
• Description: Drought Preparedness
• State: CO
• Basin: Statewide
• Date: 6/1/1997
• Author: Donald Wilhite
• Title: Improving Drought Management in the West
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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Integratmg Drought Managemenr and Water Policy

severity of extreme events in association with changes in climate, an
Environmental Protection Agency report (Smith and Tirpak, 1989) called for
the development of a national drought policy to coordinate Federal response
to drought.

In addition to these "calls for action," several studies completed in the late
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s evaluated specific response efforts and offered
recommendations for improving future drought management in the United
States. The recommendations emanating from these studies placed greater
emphasis on deriving Federal initiatives to address many of the problems and
issues identified, although the roles of State Government, regional
organizations, and the private sectors were not ignored. A content analysis of
the following studies was completed for this report: General Accounting
Office (1979), Wilhite et aL (1986), Grigg and Vlachos (1989), Riebsame et al.
(1991), Wilhite (1993a), Office of Technology Assessment (U.S. Congress,
OTA, 1993), Wilhite and Wood (1994), and FEMA (1996). The goal ofthis
analysis was to identifY common threads or themes from these studies that
would reduce the impact of future droughts and improve response efforts.
The content of these studies is summarized below.

. General Accounting Office {Federal Response to the 1976 to 1977
Drought: What Should be Done Next?}

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The General Accounting Office (1979) characterized the response
programs implemented in 1976 to 1977 as largely untimely, poorly
coordinated, and inequitable. They found that assistance provided by
Federal agencies to farmers, communities, businesses, and water user
organizations was available too late to lessen the effects of drought.
GAO recommended that Congress direct the four principal agencies
responsible for administering relief programs in 1976 to 1977 (i.e.,
Departments of Agriculture, Interior, and Commerce, and the Small
Business Administration) to consider the problems identified and
formulate a national plan to provide future assistance in a more
"timely, consistent, and equitable manner." Plan development issues
included identifying the respective roles of each agency to reduce
duplication and overlap, legislation needed to more clearly define those
roles, and standby legislation that might be necessary to allow for more
timely response to problems associated with drought, GAO suggested
that effectively implementing a national plan required establishing
uniform criteria for determining "priorities for the type of projects to be

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