Improving Governance. In the West and on the coasts, ELI teams facing water resources issues on multiple levels

• Pages: 56-56

Page 56 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2009, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, March/April 2009

Making the Law Work for

People, Places, and the Planet

ELI is fostering better

and more participatory

decisionmaking on water

issues to protect human

health, livelihoods, and the

natural environment that

sustains them.

Adam

Schempp leads

the Institute’s

work on water

rights, alloca-

tion, and use

and is Director

of ELI’s West-

ern Water Pro-

gram. In De-

cember 2008,

he served as a

panelist on the

University of

Colorado School of Law’s

workshop,“Evolving Re-

gional Frameworks for Ag-

to-Urban Water Transfers.”

As rapid population

growth throughout the

West has driven increased

urban demand for water,

many river basins have no

more water to allocate,

causing a number of cities

to look to agricultural water

rights for their supplies.

is workshop focused on

three examples of such wa-

ter rights transfers that leave

the rights with the farmers

and establish sophisticated

trading schemes with the

municipalities.

Presentations highlighted

the water banking system

in Idaho, the water trading

agreement between the Palo

Verde Irrigation District

and Metropolitan Water

District in California, and

the “Super Ditch” project

in Colorado. After presen-

tations on each topic by

those involved, the panel,

led by Dean

David Getches,

was given an

opportunity

to comment.

Schempp ob-

served that “for

these strategies

to be successful

in the long-

term and allow

users to better

weather water

supply variabil-

ity, they will

need to have an expedited

water transfer process to

meet municipal supply and

will need to promote ef‌f‌i-

ciency in agricultural water

use. ey are rather success-

ful at the f‌irst, but not yet

successful at the second.”

e money from water

transfers that is made avail-

able to farmers can provide

the means and incentive for

reducing water losses from

evaporation, and possibly

encourage the growing of

crops that require less water.

However, the status quo

and occasionally restrictive

laws can make this change

dif‌f‌icult. Schempp currently

is developing a handbook,

Western Water in the 21st

Century, that details practi-

cal solutions to the wasteful

nature of the prior appro-

Improving Governance In the West and on the coasts, ELI teams

facing water resources issues on multiple levels

priation system, in the hope

of freeing water users from

these archaic and wasteful

constraints.

On the marine side of

water policy, Schempp,

along with ELI colleagues

Kathryn Mengerink and Jay

Austin, recently completed

a white paper on how to ex-

pand the role of ecosystem-

based management in the

Coastal Zone Management

Act. e current state of

the oceans suggests that the

single-species, single-sector,

and single-activity marine

management strategies are

failing. Ecosystem-based

management dif‌fers from

this approach by consider-

ing the entire ecosystem.

Many individuals and orga-

nizations have recommend-

ed this approach, including

On December 16, ELI President Leslie Carothers gave a live in-

terview on DC TV news station Fox5 in which she praised Pres-

ident-Elect Barack Obama’s picks for his environmental team.

“It’s a terric group, and it has to be because they have a lot

of work to do,” said Carothers, speaking just days after Obama

tapped his new team members— Carol Browner (Energy and

Climate Czar), Steven Chu (Secretary of Energy), Lisa Jackson

(EPA Administrator), and Nancy Sudley (Chairman, Council on

Environmental Quality). “Steven Chu is a brilliant choice,” she

added. The interview was led by Fox5’s Allison Seymour.

the U.S. Commission on

Ocean Policy and the Pew

Oceans Commission.

e CZMA arguably is

the most inf‌luential federal

law on marine and coastal

resources in the U.S., but

it has few provisions that

directly ref‌lect ecosystem-

based management. is

paper relies on ELI’s experi-

ence to identify sections

of the act that could be

adapted to implement

such schemes, and suggests

language that could be

considering during CZMA

reauthorization. As the

reauthorization process has

raised interest in the

CZMA’s structure and

objectives, this simple idea

could have far-reaching ef-

fects on the health of this

country’s coastal areas.

ELI Staff Attorney Adam

Schempp.

Carothers Lauds Obama’s Green Team

Choices in Live TV News Broadcast