The Evolution of Water Resource Planning and Decision Making
本书梳理了美国水资源政策的历史发展，从单一目标到多目标项目再到生态系统修复的转变，适合美国州或联邦水资源部门员工阅读。
This book summarises the historical development of US water policy leading to the content and context of today's water resource planning issues. The text should be required reading for US state or federal employees in the water resources sector. This fact points to the incomplete title; the words ‘ … in the United States’ should have been appended to truthfully reflect the book's content. Besides minor reference to French engineers of the nineteenth century, the book focuses on the history and recent trends of US water resources planning and decision-making by government bodies. An over-arching theme is the evolution of US water management goals from single purpose (e.g. water supply or flood control) to multi-objective projects to the current focus away from development and towards ecosystem restoration. This evolution is accompanied by changing laws, shifting roles of federal, state and local government, and the realisation that water management is more than just an engineering problem. Increasingly economists and later ecologists were brought in to weigh the options and propose solutions; modern engineers get little coverage here. The book recounts the success and failures of interdisciplinary planning of water resource projects and the sometimes storied cohabitation of the various disciplinary approaches. Economists and valuation methods played a major role and the book traces the major economic policy and methods debates of the twentieth century.