@techreport{Hudzik2003Evaluating,
abstract = {This thesis examines the collaborative processes used by the
CALFED Operations Group (Ops Group) and the outcomes achieved by
these processes. The CALFED Bay Delta Program is a complex
partnership of over 20 state and federal agencies that seeks to balance
competing needs and interests in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The
Ops Group coordinates the operations of the two large water export
projects in the south Delta - the Central Valley Project (CVP) and State
Water Project (SWP) - with environmental and water quality regulations.
Participants in the Ops Group were brought together by a conflict
between environmental protection and water supply reliability. Fish
populations were declining, while actions taken under the Endangered
Species Act threatened the stability of the water supply. Through
collaboration, dialogue, and detailed modeling of the system, the
Operations Group was able to overcome decades of mistrust, legal
barriers, financial risks, and scientific uncertainty to develop new tools for
managing the complex Delta water system.
The Ops Group moved from a system of isolated bureaucratic
decision making and prescriptive standards for protecting endangered fish
in the Delta to a system based on cooperative real-time management,
where minor modifications to the CVP and SWP were made on a daily
basis based on real-time monitoring data. The program at the center of
this breakthrough was the Environmental Water Account. The
Environmental Water Account is a program that was designed to let the
Operations Group maintain reliability in the SWP and CVP water supply
while reducing the amount of water pumped out of the Delta when the
pumps pose a danger to fish.
It is too soon to tell whether the Ops Group and the Environmental
Water Account have improved either fish populations or long-term water
supply reliability. However, this thesis describes several notable
achievements that Ops Group members would not have been able to
accomplish without collaboration. Agency staff and stakeholders with a
history of adversity were able to create positive working relationships and
shared understandings of the Delta water system. The social capital and new institutional structures built by these processes have enabled the Ops
Group to creatively deal with challenges that would have previously
resulted in an impasse.},
author = {Catherine Marie Hudzik},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {330},
language = {eng},
number = {2003,06},
title = {Evaluating the Effectiveness of Collaboration in Water Resources Planning in California: A Case Study of CALFED},
type = {Working paper / University of California, Institute of Urban and Regional Development},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/23609},
year = {2003}
}
