Abstract:

The role of water resources management in making democratic governance work will be explained as part of CSU’s Year of Democracy series. University President Amy Parsons wrote “land-grant universities remain our nation’s greatest and most powerful tool for modeling reconciliation, progress, democratic ideas, and excellence,” and water management as taught and studied at CSU is in the bull’s eye of such models. Roles of water resources managers in democratic governance extend to situations such as interstate water compacts, urban water services, and environmental justice issues like trust in tap water. Scale factors in democratic governance will be explained in examples for cities, water user associations, watersheds, and transboundary situations. Seminar attendees may be surprised to learn that some social scientists consider water management as hegemonic and as an attempt by engineers and managers to seize power. How such dilemmas are addressed in tools such as integrated planning and common pool resource management will be explained. The ongoing debate in the US about liberty versus democracy will be addressed in the context of dealing with thorny issues like water as a human right and regulatory controls such as the “Waters of the United States” or WOTUS issue.

Bio: https://www.engr.colostate.edu/ce/neil-grigg/

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