Prior appropriation and water planning reform in Montana’s Yellowstone River Basin: path dependency or boundary object?

ABSTRACT

This study deepens our understanding of the institutional limitations of participatory water planning. Based on an analysis of a participatory planning effort in Montana, U.S.A., we examine the ways in which prior appropriation (PA), an established legal doctrine based on privatized water rights, both constrains and enables the effective functioning of this mode of governance to enhance water conservation practices. In one situation, a state-led proposal to require water-use measuring was undermined by strong libertarian resistance to governmental regulation. As an expression of path dependency, PA redirected the deliberations back to the status-quo. Yet, in another state-led proposal, PA functioned as a boundary object that helped garner consensual support for what is effectively an alternative water sharing plan based on ‘shared sacrifice.’ In this second case, PA functioned as a pragmatic means to facilitate conservation practices to address future projections of growing water scarcity and drought. The study empirically examines the discursive framework of both policy recommendations and the mechanisms that led to their seemingly divergent receptions from planning participants. Evidence is drawn from a systematic content analysis of video recording transcriptions, ethnographic notes taken during meetings, and key interactions observed among planning participants and the research team.

KEYWORDS:

• State water planning
• water resources management
• conservation
• stakeholder collaboration
• political ecology

Acknowledgements

We thank Andrea Gerlak and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. We also thank the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the members of the YBAC, and the student assistants at Montana State University-Billings who participated in this research. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Matthew Anderson is an assistant professor in the Geography and Anthropology Department at Eastern Washington University, and teaches introductory courses in human geography, cartography, and upper-division and graduate seminars in urban studies, political geography, critical social theory, and natural resource management. Dr. Anderson obtained his PhD in geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and holds an MA in geography and environmental studies from Northeastern Illinois University. His research interests are focused on the political economy of the contemporary North American city, the politics of water provision in the American northwest, and critical social and spatial theory. His research has examined the politics of urban governance, resistence to gentrification, and the dynamics of rent in Chicago, with current projects focused on the environmental impacts of oil and gas production in eastern Montana and the dynamics of water resource management in Montana's Yellowstone River Basin. In each case, he examines emergence and evolution, particularly the ways in which governing actors respond to rapidly changing socio-political conditions and economic realities.

Lucas C. Ward as a human geographer trained in political ecology, Dr. Ward understands local instances of environmental change to be rooted to local- regional-, and global-scale political economic process. Dr. Ward is especially interested in how different people interpret and respond to environmental change and to policies and projects intended to regulate it. His main areas of regional expertise are South America (especially the Paraguay River/La Plata River basin) and the American West. His fieldwork in Paraguay focuses on two related processes: 1) how global models of good environmental governance – specifically, “Integrated Resource Management” (IRM)– get translated into action by governmental and non-governmental resource management professionals; and 2) how the indigenous Yshyr (“eesh-eer”) and mestizo residents of Paraguay's portion of the Pantanal Wetlands experience their country's transition toward this market-oriented approach to environmental rule-making. Dr. Ward uses mixed methods in his fieldwork, including ethnographic field methods, participatory risk mapping, Q method, factor and cluster analysis, and case study approaches.

Susan J. Gilbertz earned her Ph.D. in Geography from Texas A&M University, and currently teaches courses in Geography and Environmental Studies at MSU Billings. Dr. Gilbertz focuses on how individuals become attached to particular places and how those attachments influence environmental philosophies, collaborations, and agency. As the principle investigator for the project, “The Yellowstone Cultural Inventory–2006,” she oversaw interviews with three hundred people living near the Yellowstone River. Co-authored articles from the 2006 effort appear in Studies in the Sociology of Science and Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. Dr. Gilbertz has also examined how local committees influence development along the Upper Yellowstone, the Madison and the Big Hole Rivers of Montana. Results of these efforts have appeared in Professional Geographer and Rural Sociology. The results of her research in Milltown, MT was released in book form in 2011, with co-author Trudy Milburn. The book, Citizen Discourse on Contaminated Water, Superfund Cleanups, and Landscape Restoration: (Re)making Milltown, Montana, is included in the Cambria Press series on Politics, Institutions, and Public Policy. Earlier projects have examined 1) environmental ethics training as a means of mediating environmental conflict, 2) community based initiatives as a means of addressing toxic waste disposal, 3) grass-roots organizations in areas where environmental contaminations are suspected of causing birth defects, and 4) combined scientific and local community advisory boards as entities to address TMDL mandates.

Jamie McEvoy is a human-environment geographer with three streams of research interests: 1) using a political ecology approach to investigate the social, political, and economic drivers of water governance and environmental change; 2) assessing climate change vulnerability, identifying equitable adaptation options, and fostering adaptive capacity; and 3) using a science and technology studies (STS) approach to understand technological change and risk in socioecological systems. Her previous research has used water and water infrastructure as a lens to examine differential power relations in society and understand the process of uneven development, particularly in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Dr. McEvoy has also conducted research to assess rancher participation in a water quality improvement program and adoption of best management practices in northern Utah. Beyond her research on water resources, she has researched and published on the feminization of agriculture in southeast Mexico. Her current research agenda focuses on the political economic dimensions of the climate-water-energy nexus in key Western states. Understanding how climate change policies affect the energy-water nexus, and vice versa, are key research questions that are being addressed to identify the ways in which this region is ‘doubly exposed’ to climate change, as well as socio-economic factors that contribute to environmental change.

Damon M. Hall research examines the interactions between social and ecological systems where science, policy, and culture meet. He is interested in trends in environmental decision-making, policy formation/implementation, and the sciences that are increasingly integrating local communities in planning. His research is transdisciplinary in that it engages stakeholders, managers, and scientists to design transformational solutions that make sense to how people-whose behavior is the target of policy-commonly experience their world. He was a Sustainability Science Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Maine's Sustainability Solutions Initiative: A National Science Foundation-supported interdisciplinary portfolio of sustainability science projects that links university research with stakeholders to best align science, decision-making, policy, and place. His dissertation research was sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and involved understanding riverfront landowners' perceptions of federal, state, and local riparian management on the Yellowstone River in Montana.

Notes

1 It is important to note that different language is often used in political science and by professionals, such as ‘preconditions’ or ‘ground rules,’ to refer to the same general phenomenon, yet these different communities of scholars and practitioners are rarely in direct dialogue.

2 It should be noted that the YBAC experience should not be interpreted as reflective of what transpired in the other basins, as the planning process unfolded somewhat differently across the four BACs.

3 Meetings were typically all day, beginning at 9 am and concluding in the late afternoon, often from 3 to 5 pm.

4 Space limitations prevent a broader discussion of shared sacrifice and the ways in which it has been implemented elsewhere, i.e. California (see Anderson, Ward, et al., 2016).

5 Emergency conditions are declared when temperature and flow levels surpass specified thresholds.

6 Each participating landowner develops their own plan for how their respective sacrifice is to be accomplished.