by Christopher N. Brown

I am haunted by Powell. He had it right. But how did he know?

John Wesley Powell—scientist, geographer, explorer, ethnographer, and consummate bureaucrat—had many remarkable accomplishments. While his first descent through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River in 1869 may be the most famous, his early leadership in creating both the U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of Ethnology and establishing the groundwork for the Bureau of Reclamation are likely the most significant historically. I have also marveled at how he was able to create very precise maps, over vast unexplored areas, without aerial or satellite imagery; he must have possessed a sixth sense for places, spaces, and directions.

But what haunts me here is the astonishing intellect and range of a mind that could comprehend the significance of not merely rivers, lakes, and watering holes, but watersheds, to a West just being settled, and then translate that understanding into proposals for action. The conceptual leaps and formulations take my breath away. Powell understood in the 1870s not only the geological, but also the political and social significance of a watershed: that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of the “community.” Was it easier to see in those days, when the spaces were undeveloped or, in those western haunts of Powell’s, where the ridges and divides are more pronounced than they are in the East? Perhaps. But I still credit Powell with remarkable insight.

Among other proposals, Powell suggested that new states, such as North Dakota and Montana, organize themselves politically around drainages—watersheds—rather than around the traditional, straight-lined counties, in order to conform to the essential fact of existence: access to water. He proposed cooperative approaches to organizing pasturage districts and use of limited water rights that were a century ahead of their time. As Wallace Stegner says in his biography of Powell, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian:

“What he [Powell] suggested was so radical that it could not possibly have any effect on the delegates [to the Montana state convention], so rational that it could not possibly come to pass short of heaven, so intelligently reasoned from fact that it must have sounded to Montana’s tradition-and-myth-bound constitution makers like the program of a crank.”

Some have made Powell out to be the patron saint of river running (although someone who spent most of his time on the Grand Canyon trip in a chair tied to his boat hardly embodies the dare-devil exuberance of a river runner). Others have portrayed him as the grandfather of river conservation (however, it is hard to reconcile this with his recommendations for damming and irrigation). For seeing the world through a lens of watersheds, though, surely Powell was a prophet.

We cannot all have Powell’s inductive powers, his ability to see the huge picture beyond the particulars, but we can all act on the vision he laid out: of watershed-wide conservation efforts based on cooperation, involvement of all stakeholders, and acceptance of and reliance on the facts that science and observation provide.

Historical Approaches

We have not acted on Powell’s vision until recently. As Tim Palmer documents in Endangered Rivers and the Conservation Movement, river conservation has been a braided channel, has had low-water marks and high, from fights over damming rivers and water rights to agreements over designating wild and scenic rivers and regulating polluters. Recent river conservation has focused on endangered species protection, multi-bjective management of floodplains, establishment of river parkways and greenways, and urban stream restoration. National outrage over dams, flooding, and pollution have brought narrow, but expensive, responses by government agencies at the urging of national environmental groups. Local responses and solutions focused on river corridors have played an increasing role in river conservation.

There are good reasons for this. People identify with their local river, their creek, bayou, brook, slough, arroyo, kill, or run. Unlike watersheds, rivers have familiar names: Housatonic, and Pestigo, and Sipsey Fork and Sacramento, to name a few. River corridors have identifiable boundaries, unlike the amorphous land mass—in fact, all the land—that a watershed encompasses.

In fact, river protection has tended to be corridor-focused. State and federal government began designating protected rivers in the early 1900s, and by the 1960s many federal and state wild and scenic rivers bills had passed; Since the 1970s, local communities have approached their rivers with corridor planning and protection. Under its Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance program, the National Park Service developed a “Riverwork” process to assist communities with collaborative planning for their river corridors. While this work has occurred “in the context of the larger watershed,” the focus has been the river segment and its immediate environs.

But changes over the past two decades have set the stage for a new approach. Consider:

• Conservation groups and government agencies brought forward the indisputable scientific knowledge that our river systems were deteriorating.
• Massive floods have been more frequent and more damaging throughout the nation which underscores the necessity of planning comprehensively. The floods have also raised public awareness about the interconnectedness of rivers and their watersheds. As we continue to build and rebuild in floodplains, flooding becomes an increasing problem.
• Restoration of damaged natural areas, including wetlands and streams, not simply protection of healthy habitats, has become a much higher national priority than ever before.
• The approach of taking a “systems” view of resource issues and seeking holistic solutions (rather than resource-by-resource solutions) is not only recognized as ideal, but increasingly as the norm. Whether for water quality or Wild and Scenic values—the river corridor protection approach has just not gotten the job done.
• With escalating costs and government downsizing, we have realized that the government cannot do it all. The property rights movement has often blocked federal initiatives, making local solutions the most politically viable.
• In the past couple of years, “customer service” has been the byword in the federal government; the government is now to be in service to the public, with the public in many cases expected to lead.
• The paradigm for decision making for public resources has shifted dramatically, from agencies holding hearings and announcing decisions, to collaborative planning with early inclusion of stakeholders.
• The adage that “we all live downstream” has become increasingly difficult to ignore.

All these factors lead to the inescapable conclusion of ecology that everything is interconnected, and that solutions to environmental problems need to be “inter” in every respect: interdisciplinary, interjurisdictional, interactive. They have also led to a change in river conservation best characterized as the Watershed Movement.

Practicing the Watershed Approach

The current level of watershed-type activity is phenomenal. From Rivers Unlimited in Ohio and Idaho Rivers United to the Alabama Rivers Alliance and Amigos Bravos in New Mexico, citizen river groups across the country are adopting watersheds as their organizing unit. Some 3,000 river and watershed organizations are listed in the 1996-1997 River and Watershed Conservation Directory.

National groups such as River Network, Know Your Watershed, Pacific Rivers Council, American Rivers, Trout Unlimited, and Appalachian Mountain Club are playing diverse roles.

States such as Massachusetts, New York, Texas, and Maryland have passed legislation or established programs specifically to deal with clean water and other issues at the watershed level.

Watershed ’96, a conference sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and others, drew 2,000 participants in the spring of 1996. Other federal agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have joined EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in organizing themselves along river basin, or watershed boundaries.

Currently, the National Park Service’s Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance program is assisting two dozen community-based watershed efforts around the country, and the recently renamed Natural Resources Conservation Service continues its watershed activities under the Public Law 566 Watershed Conservation program. From the Columbia River basin to the Connecticut River, large watersheds are the subject of massive interagency and public-private fishery restoration programs.

So, the watershed approach is here. It is not a radical departure from river corridor planning, which emphasized good data, public involvement, and other techniques for at least a decade; However, it is a significant step forward for agencies, nonprofits, and communities in four respects:

1) Stakeholder Participation - The breadth and quality of involvement in planning for watersheds mirror the complexity of the ecosystem: “It’s the people, stupid”—and all of them, with all their diverse occupational and commodity and aesthetic interests. The recognition that all stakeholders—across jurisdictional lines, across traditional cleavages between business people, landowners, and environmentalists—need to be involved in developing solutions is a hallmark of the Watershed Movement. While broader involvement significantly increases the complexity, it often leads to better, more creative, more informed solutions. Broad community participation and “visioning” processes are helping people regain a sense of place, ownership, and responsibility for their watershed and their community. At its best, such participation is characterized by “P and the 7 C’s” —Partnership, Cooperative, Collaborative, Coordinated, Collegial, Consensus-based, Community-driven, and Citizen-based. A neutral forum for discussion, education, and decision making—often facilitated by a neutral party—is crucial.

2) Focus on Water - While any one of many resource management issues—preserving wildlife habitat, coping with property damage from flooding, establishing wild and scenic values, encouraging tourism—may be a driving force in an effort, that effort finally focuses on the allocation, use, or quality of water.

3) Science and the Use of a Precisely Defined Hydrologic Unit - Scientific data are collected and analyzed at the scale of a watershed by interdisciplinary teams with members from public and private entities, and solutions based on this science drive many aspects of planning for the watershed. This approach also brings a fresh geographic scope to the equation, as the watershed replaces hard-to-determine river corridor boundaries as our planning unit.

4) Diverse Issues and Funding Sources - Interrelated issues, such as water quality and recreation or flooding and historic preservation lead to multi-objective solutions, solutions that solve more than one problem at a time and can often lead to the availability of many funding sources for watershed conservation ranging from state, federal, and local governments to corporations and philanthropic organizations. Coordinated planning and implementation is needed to take advantage of many funding sources and can lead to more efficient use of funds and saving taxpayers’ money. Transportation, protection of cultural resources, erosion and flood control, recreation, and aquatic habitat restoration are only a few types of funded initiatives that can contribute to a watershed effort. Any current watershed project without funding from at least half a dozen sources is missing out.

Personally, I have not come easily to the watershed approach. I am intimidated by the potential vastness of watershed projects and the possibility that innumerable difficult land-use decisions can lead to paralysis. I am also bothered that watersheds do not “sing”; they have none of the place-specific poetry, legend and beauty that have inspired generations of Americans to become activists for saving rivers. Finally, deep down, I worry that the watershed approach, with its expectations of consensus-based decision making, will compromise the advocacy that is the irreplaceable engine of conservation progress. When it comes to watersheds, I have been ambivalent. As Edward Abbey described himself in another context: “a reluctant enthusiast...a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic.”

However, my desire to see a logical conservation approach coupled with the fact that numerous river and watershed advocacy groups are undertaking and participating in watershed approaches in thoughtful, energetic, and effective ways, has converted me to watershed thinking.

There will always be a place for working with the pieces—urban rivers, streambank restoration, floodplain management, protection of natural rivers—and, indeed, it may be these pieces to which people can most relate, which will inspire the affection and outrage and passion that fuel river conservation. <>p> But I now see these pieces under a watershed umbrella. We are finally advancing Powell’s vision of a rational approach. As John Maynard Keynes said many years ago, “We will always do the rational thing, but only after exhausting all other alternatives.”

Christopher Brown is acting chief of rivers and watersheds for the National Park Service’s National Center for Recreation and Conservation. Chris also served as vice president and acting executive director of American Rivers.