Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and coordination. States, for the most part, have not had a very
good history in this regard.”
The Political Arena
It's also tough to initiate any radical change, because of various
prior commitments, adds Mumme. “You can't fi nd a much more
politicized arena than water and water rights. It's really at the foun-
dation of wealth and the creation of wealth and the subsistence and
well-being of society. So you have to acknowledge its complexity,
and you end up tinkering with it; you make minor adjustments.”
Those “minor adjustments” manifest themselves in all kinds
of creative and not-so-creative ways. “There is room in the laws for
increased effi ciency requirements,” says Mumme. “In theory you
can only use water
benefi cially,
which means not wastefully. We've
been pretty lax in defi ning what waste is. You could boost the stan-
dards for what is waste, for example.”
Philadelphia water law expert Kenneth J. Warren agrees. “
Benefi cial
use
is largely a water quantity doctrine, and the EPA has relatively little
authority over water quantity, so you have to ask, 'What are the states
doing?' I do think [that] in that context, there is substantial opportu-
nity for states to better defi ne
benefi cial use
, and they have an incentive
to do so in locations where water is scarce.”
Federal, Regional, or Something Else
Some areas of water management can be solved only at the federal
level, adds Warren. “I don't think you're likely to see the Colorado
River, for example, regulated on a state-by-state basis. So the ques-
tion then becomes, 'Do states form regional agencies to regulate
interstate fl ows as we did in the Delaware River Basin with the
Delaware River Basin Commission, or does the federal government
intervene?' My personal preference would be to have regional orga-
nizations regulate. Having the regional fl exibility to adopt solutions
suited to the affected communities is better than having a one-
size-fi ts-all national program. But I do not think you can leave it to
individual states in all instances. Some of the problems are just too
great for any one state to handle on its own.”
