Multi-benefit planning policy

[James Marple <jesl@carolina.net>]

RE: Criteria for policy effectiveness:
How do we measure success in applying policy?  

While EPA's focus must of course be water quality we cannot divorce this from quantity management.  These core components of a watershed management plan are too closely linked to be treated separately, in almost every case.  EPA information supply policies should aim to educate the public to recognize false conventional wisdoms, to trust common sense perceptions of conceptual planning, (such as saving rainwater rather than disposing of it) to seek hard data that will dispel illusions created by bureaucrats and other agents of land speculation or water/energy supply 'robber barons'.  The public will not get emotionally involved enough in local environmental affairs to get actively involved in EPA efforts to promote sensible planning unless it is shown sufficient benefit from this.  Ordinary citizens will not seek good data and absorb this, will not become involved enough to support EPA efforts that would foil misplanning, unless they see immediate personal benefit. But with good information in hand these citizens will become more interested in correcting obviously flawed programs, will interact among themselves and with public servants more energentically, will be more careful in their selection of politicians. (The ultimate key to smart planning.) 
  
Could EPA officials have pointed out more effectively that flood reduction goals of the recently approved Murrieta Creek channelization project in SW Riverside County, CA, costing $90 million, could be achieved by storing the seven billion gallons of stormwater it protects against?   Could they have gone to greater effort to show that storing this stormwater could cost as little as $700,000?  Do they know enough about the implementation of urban/silvicultural/agricultural BMPs to have provided a convincing-enough presentation to the public to elicit demands that would cause full exploration of this alternative?  Ordinary workmen can calculate that building these BMPs will cost about $100 per million gallons of water stored while the approved project will spend $4,200 per million gallons of floodwater disposed of.   Do non-confrontation policies of the EPA rule out aggressive effort by its officials to make the public aware of planning alternatives such as this?

Should our public servants have gone to greater lengths, offending powerful local Congressmen who control their agency's budget, by illustrating that adopting a rainfall retention approach would correct this project's certain pollution of the last free-flowing river on California's South Coast and would also make the area independent in water supply?  (Saving over $15 million yearly.) Could excellent EPA official Mary Butterwick have done more to illustrate that increasing the rate of rainwater disposal will increase severity of flooding in downstream Camp Pendleton?  (It suffered about $100 million in damage just eight years ago.)  EPA officials courageously lodged strong protests against this project but did they do all they could to inform the public about the costs and benefits of alternatives to it?  I question whether agency policies allow full exercise of their powers, so that every means to involve concerned citizens could be employed.  (TV ads, a documentary circulated to all organizations, even billboards. e.g.)

I suggest that the EPA may only be faulted in this case for insufficient attention to publicizing facts about planning alternatives.  It may be that even then the residents of this "Vale of Apathetica" would not have responded in sufficient quantity to achieve the ends sought by dedicated public servants in federal agencies, but this might have drawn forth enough comment to justify conscientious Army Corps of Engineers permitters requiring a full evaluation of that most reasonable alternative to rainwater disposal, rainwater storage.  Extreme cases of environmental damage from ridiculously inappropriate planning deserve extreme efforts to educate the public enough to overcome timidity born of ignorance and get parents involved in defending their family and neighborhood against unnecessary degradation of economic/environmental resources.