Shared Vision Planning for Clean Water Act Permits: an experiment in Colorado

摘要

Growing populations and finite water supplies have led to the expansion of water supply projects in the West and Southeast. In many cases, cities will need a federal Clean Water Act permit to expand their water supplies. In the past, the permitting process for such projects has at times resulted in poor outcomes for either water suppliers or the environment. For example, in March 2009, a U.S. District Court judge ruled the Corps and EPA were "arbitrary and capricious" in their approval of a permit to build the King William Reservoir in Virginia. A month later, after two decades and over $50 million worth of planning, the project was suspended.Shared Vision Planning, a collaborative planning process with technical and social components, may offer a better approach. The cities of Fort Collins and Greeley Colorado have joined forces with the Nature Conservancy and other organizations in a limited experimental application of Shared Vision Planning in a water supply permitting process. This effort is being conducted separately from but in parallel to the permit assessment. The participating parties hope that good initial outcomes will lead to expanded collaboration. This paper describes how the parties explored the benefits and risks of collaboration, how they decided to conduct this experiment, and how they are using Shared Vision Planning to explore alternative ways to meet both water supply and environmental objectives, and what options they are considering next.