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How to organize governance -- including public participation, stakeholder consultation, authoritative decision making, and implementation -- remains an ongoing puzzle in the management and protection of water resources. The decades-long promotion of integrated water resource management has been expressed largely in terms of the use of surface water contours -- catchments, watersheds, river basins. The same period has seen the growing importance of groundwater for public supply, irrigation, maintenance of streamflows and aquatic habitat, making the management and protection of groundwater resources increasingly vital. Although groundwater and surface water are hydrologically interrelated, the integration of groundwater management and protection with surface water resource governance regimes has proved harder than some might expect. In this WaterTalk, we will consider a) how and why the effort toward integrated water resource management that includes groundwater has been and continues to be a challenge, b) whether the challenge needs to be overcome, and c) what alternatives to integrated governance and management might exist and what the rationale is for those alternatives.
Speaker Bio
William Blomquist is a Professor of Political Science and Adjunct Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). His research interests concern governmental organization and public policy, with a specialization in the field of water institutions and water management. He is also an Affiliated Faculty member of the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, a member of the editorial board of Policy Studies Journal, and a member of the board of directors of the White River Alliance. Blomquist received his bachelor’s degree in economics, master’s degree in political science, and graduate certificate in public administration from Ohio University, and his Ph.D. in political science from Indiana University.