The 1969 highlights left the evolution of federal guidelines for water resource developments at the issuance in June 1969 of the "Procedures for Evaluation of Water and Related Land Resource Projects" by the Special Task Force of the Water Resources Council. That document recommended that in lieu of the current objective of national economic efficiency (national income maximization), a four-objective planning scheme be adopted for the federal water agencies, requiring the explicit consideration not only of the national income effects of a project, but also the impacts on regional development, environment, and social well-being.
Three major events in 1970 have moved the multiple objective approach much closer to adoption. First, test teams from federal agencies, universities, and a private consulting group attempted to apply the new procedures to 10 specific existing or already designed projects.
The Special Task Force has interpreted the results of these tests to indicate that "the multiple objective approach to planning is practical. Meaningful results can be accomplished and reasonably uniform comparability in application can be achieved by carefully structured principles, standards, and procedures.”
The second 1970 development was the separate publication of "Principles for Planning Water and Land Resources" and "Standards for Planning Water and Land Resources." The test results mentioned above had indicated that the initial statement of multiple-objective procedures had dealt primarily with concepts and given little guidance on specific steps or methods to be followed in elaborating the four objectives or accounts. The "Principles" publication thus became a revised statement of the general scheme for multiple-objective planning and the "Standards" was published as a looseleaf document to provide up-to-date definitions and measurement standards for benefits and costs, procedures for plan formulation, definitions of national priorities, procedures for participation of various groups in planning and project review, etc.
The third development was the final "Findings and Recommendations" of the Special Task Force to the Water Resources Council, recommending (1) adoption of the "Principles" subject to a public hearing and Presidential approval; (2) similar adoption of the "Standards"; and (3) that the "Standards" be made to apply to all planning studies, including ongoing studies where practical.
Where do these developments leave us with respect to having operational procedures for ordering priorities in the federal water resources field? In some important ways, the efforts of the Special Task Force have improved our methods of social appraisal. Opening up the explicit consideration of other objectives has been a signal advance. Of even greater significance is the emphasis placed on looking at alternative projects or courses of action "involving all types of structural and management measures to be carried out by Federal, State, local and private interests. These . . . will not be limited to the programs available to a few Federal construction agencies as tends to be the case under present procedures." While it is not made clear how the "Federal construction agencies" are to be motivated to consider the much wider range of alternatives, such an explicit policy would be very welcome.
The major remaining difficulties are that there are no accepted procedures for measuring regional development, environmental effects, or social well-being, nor would we know how to weight these objectives if their accomplishment by specific projects could be quantified. As a result, it is no longer possible to speak of optimizing project design or of ordering projects in an unambiguous preference ordering, and the door has been left open to the possibility of even greater confusion and manipulation by special interests than existed under the single national income criterion. What is one designer's environmental enhancement may be another's environmental degradation. The task force recommends that "each objective be given equal consideration." Yet, assuming we could quantify the various objectives, do we really want to give equal weight to each for every project, for every location, for every point in time?
The difficulties in making this approach work are substantial and include the network of different agencies, each with a specific traditional mission or viewpoint. But apart from any thought of administrative reorganization, the extent to which the federal government is in-tent upon making this approach work will be evident by its allocating the funds necessary for related basic research.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1971 issue of Resources magazine.
