AWWA ACE59988

The Western Governors' Association, the National Drought Policy Commissionand its successor effort, the Interim National Drought Council, have made droughtmonitoring and prediction a top priority since the prolonged 1986-1993 drought in thewestern United States and subsequent drought in the southern Great Plains two yearslater. While drought is almost an expected occurrence in the west and mid-west, themulti-year droughts continued and expanded into the east and southeast in Georgia,Florida, Alabama and Texas, and up the eastern seaboard into Maine and Vermont in themid to late 1990s. When drought impacts were felt in the Washington, DC area,however, lawmakers were faced with a flood of calls from nearby Maryland and Virginia,asking what they could do to help agricultural, residential, commercial, industrial anddomestic water users. At the center of the dialog was the need to improve the ability topredict drought occurrences along with the sharing of ways to respond to droughtimpacts.Quietly, however, federal, state and local water managers were asking the thirdquestion: what good is prediction if your drought program still features responsemeasures? Their follow on question was: how can we better predict droughtoccurrences; and, based on that information, what measures can we take before droughtoccurs to lessen or even eliminate the impacts? The national and state leaders discoveredthe answers were imbedded in the suite of water resources management tools featuring acombination of facilities planning, operational flexibilities, progressive conservationmeasures, water recycling, and new supply development such as desalination andemergency storage and management measures. The challenge they also recognized ishow to develop support for preparedness programs that may be costly, to alleviateimpacts that are predicted to occur in the future? How can water managers generate theinterest and create a platform for a drought preparedness dialog with their communitiesduring times when water is plentiful and the memory of drought has waned?The answer may lie in developing a community friendly, conceptual cost/benefitanalytical process that involves traditional cost accounting and incorporates communityvalues and assessments of their concerns and preferences on an equal basis withtraditional engineering cost/benefit analysis.

Product Details

Edition:

Vol. - No.

Published:

06/17/2004

Number of Pages:

15

File Size:

1 file , 310 KB