Common Waters, Diverging Streams: Linking Institutions and Water Management in Arizona, California, and Colorado.

• Position: Book Review

William Blomquist, Edella Schlager, and Tanya Heikkila. 1616 P Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20036: RFF Press, April 2004. (202) 329-5028. www.rffpress.org. ISBN 1-891853-83-X. 210 pp. $70.00 Clothbound. ISBN 1-891853-86-4. $30.95 Paperback.

Common Waters, Diverging Streams provides a firsthand investigation into water management in the arid American West, focusing on three states that have adopted the conjunctive management of groundwater and surface water to make resources go further in serving people and the environment. Yet conjunctive management has followed a different history, been practiced differently, and produced different outcomes in each state. The authors question why different results have emerged from neighbors trying to solve similar problems with the same policy reform.

The authors make several important contributions to policy literature and policy making. The first book on conjunctive water management, Common Waters, Diverging Streams describes how the policy came into existence, how it is practiced, what it does and does not accomplish, and how institutional arrangements affect its application. It makes clear and persuasive links between institutions and policy outcomes, providing an explicit ease study of how policy linkages work in actual practice. Blomquist, Schlager, and Heikkila show how diverging courses in conjunctive water management can be explained by state laws...