Creating Accountability with Interstate Cooperation

• Author: Isaac Castellano,Luke Fowler
• Date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0160323X17729740
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Subject Matter: General Interest

General Interest

Creating Accountability with

Interstate Cooperation:

Unauthorized Water Use

Enforcement on the Klamath River

Luke Fowler

1

and Isaac Castellano

1

Abstract

While lacking coercive power to compel enforcement, interstate compacts create accountability

through multiple sources and layers connecting enforcement behavior to oversight. Using logistic

regression, we test a model of accountability and enforcement of unauthorized water usage on the

Klamath River. Findings indicate unauthorized water usage is far more likely to be reported and

enforced on the Klamath River than on neighboring rivers in the same counties. Conclusions indicate

the increased institutional layers of interstate compacts lead to more accountability and stringent

enforcement and reporting of unauthorized water use.

Keywords

interstate compacts, environmental security, accountability

Water scarcity is a growing problem in the

American West, where rising demand brought

on by population and industrial growth, com-

bined with the effects of climate change, are

increasing demand and decreasing supply. A

prolonged drought in California, for example,

has elevated policy discussion s on water scar-

city along with concerns around unauthorized

water use. These policy debates about the pres-

ent and future response to water scarcity in the

state and across the region are driven by water

scarcity’s disruption of long-standing irrigation

practices and related economic consequences.

Water rights management falls to the states,

whose water use policy and practices are based

on decades old expectations of water flows,

where the prior appropriation system encour-

aged over use, as a “use it or lose it” regulatory

environment shaped user decisions. States

across the west are slowly responding with

more robust approaches to managing water

rights and enforcement of those water rights.

Scholarship on collaborative social–ecological

systems management (Ostrom 2007), a method

for including a varied group of stakeholders

who help regulators design water distribution

systems and contribute themselves to sustain-

able management of scare resources, has

emerged as a mechanism for resolving the chal-

lenges posed by water scarcity that do not rely

on top-down approaches (Singleton 2002).

1

School of Public Service, Boise State University, Boise,

ID, USA

Corresponding Author:

Luke Fowler, School of Public Service, Boise State

University, 1910 University Dr., MS 1935, Boise, ID 83725,

USA.

Email: lukefowler@boisestate.edu

State and Local GovernmentReview

2017, Vol. 49(4) 234-250

ªThe Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/0160323X17729740

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These approaches are well suited to facilitate

communication and prevent conflict among

stakeholders, when employed undercertain con-

ditions, and remain the progressive standard for

sustainable management of scarce resources

(Anderies,Janssen, and Ostrom 2004).However,

the success of these approaches may be tied to

proper water right enforcement mechanisms.

Many states do not have the proper enforce-

ment regulations and capacity in place to mon-

itor and deter unauthorized water use, a

behavior that undermines the delicate balance

managed by collaborative environmental

policy-making procedures. This may be due

to the political dynamics in many states where

agricultural interests are wary to introduce

more government oversight on their operations.

However, as water scarcity takes hold and

becomes the new normal, river basins with

transboundary characteristics raise important

issues on how states will continue to manage

this vital resource given the variation in state

water management practices. While some

Western states have been slow to properly

enforce water rights and collect data on

unauthorized water use violations, others have

been more advanced in their approach. These

differences matter for basins , such as the Kla-

math River, which spans Southern Oregon and

Northern California and serves as an example

of how transboundary river systems pose legal

and political questions for water management.

The Klamath River Compact enacted in 1957

and the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement

(KBRA) enacted in 2010 set guidelines for

California and Oregon to follow for water use

management and dispute resolution.

While interstate compacts and agreements

are a tool for horizontal cooperation on narrow

policy issues, “states are cooperating with each

other in myriad ways ...[but] not all states

cooperate at the same rate or in the same way”

(Bowman 2004, 544). Such cooperation is an

example of “federalism without Washington”

(Krane 2002). On face value, the Klamath

River Compact and KBRA simply guide Ore-

gon and California on how they manage their

conflicts over water use. Further analysis,

though, indicates a broader impact for state

responses to scarcity in general and for Califor-

nia’s enforcement of its own water use statutes,

specifically. California has dozens of rivers and

several major basins, but it is the Klamath

River that has recorded a disproportionately

high rate of reported unauthorized water use

violations. We investigate why this dispropor-

tional response emerges and argue interstate

cooperative agreements create accountability

and thus stricter enforcement actions on

unauthorized water use from the state, as the

pressure of these arrangements result in

increased enforcement actions in California.

There are no provisions in either the compact

or the KBRA that dictates how states should

manage unauthorized water use violations,

making this observed difference in enforcement

trends in the state even more surprising. We

argue that this type of institutional arrangement

may serve states as they work to undermine

unauthorized water use, as added pressure to

comply with the compacts result in more atten-

tive management practices.

This article is organized as follows. We first

examine the role interstate compacts play in

shaping state behavior. We move on to discuss

the growing threat of water scarcity and the role

of unauthorized water use and its enforcement.

We then profile the particular dynamics of the

Klamath River and offer some context to exam-

ine the role interstate compacts play in state

enforcement of unauthorized water use. We

then present a model examining reported

unauthorized water use violation s across Cali-

fornia counties and provide statistical support

for the disproportionately high number of vio-

lations on the Klamath River. We close with a

discussion of our findings and their implica-

tions for state response to water scarcity.

Interstate Compacts

Interstate compacts are one mechanism in

which states engage in horizontal federalism

(ties between governments at the same level)

as opposed to vertical federalism (ties between

governments at different levels). Prior to the

emergence of “wicked” problems that transect

state jurisdictions and the era of cooperative

Fowler and Castellano 235