Can Water Agencies Work Together Sustainably? – Lessons From Metropolitan Planning

It is said that, “In the US, we hate government so much that we have thousands of them.” This decentralization has advantages, but poses problems for integration. Integration is easy to say, and hard to do. Integration is especially hard, and unavoidably imperfect, for organizing common functions across different agencies with different missions and governing authorities. (Similar problems exist for organizing common functions across programs within a single agency.) Much of what is called for in California water requires greater devotion of leadership, resources, and organization to multi-agency efforts.