Watershed Policy and Management

ELI examines federal, state, and local measures to protect water resources and assure their availability for use while maintaining ecological and hydrological integrity of watersheds, estuaries, basins, and groundwater systems. ELI's Sustainable Use of Land in the Chesapeake Bay Program also works to promote new tools that support smart growth and reinvestment across the Bay states.

Priority Areas of Expertise and Resources:

• ELI's Wetlands Program examines how compensatory mitigation decisions made in a watershed context can yield more ecologically effective and sustainable projects. In May 2004, ELI hosted the National Symposium on Compensatory Mitigation and the Watershed Approach to provide an interagency group with direction and input on watershed-based planning tools and resources that could support compensatory mitigation decision-making. The conference report is intended as a representative record of the issues discussed at the symposium.

  With funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Joyce Foundation, ELI has been working with The Nature Conservancy on three watershed approach pilot projects, one each in Georgia, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. In 2011, ELI and TNC received a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop a handbook that outlines detailed, step-by-step frameworks for carrying out the watershed approach.

• ELI's Western Water Program examines the laws governing water resource use and allocation in many Western states, with specific issues ranging from facilitating water markets to incentivizing water use efficiency, reuse, and reclamation.

• Sustainable Use of Land in the Chesapeake Bay Region: ELI works throughout the Chesapeake Bay region to promote new tools that support smart growth and reinvestment across the Bay states. Although the Institute has focused extensively on Pennsylvania and Maryland, we have also engaged in Chesapeake Bay-wide research on smart growth, such as the 2003 study Chesapeake 2000 Tax Policy Study, which examines ways in which state and local tax laws affect implementation of the 2000 Chesapeake Bay Agreement.

• Sustainable Water and Sewer Infrastructure: ELI works to integrate the rehabilitation and extension of water and sewer infrastructure with a larger vision for a sustainable landscape, demonstrating new techniques for intergovernmental coordination. Using Pennsylvania as a case study, ELI examined how sewage infrastructure affects land use planning in Planning For Development and Sewage Infrastructure: Can We Be Consistent?

Related ELI Project Areas: Ocean; Water Quality; Water Resource Management; Wetlands; International Water.

Freshwater & Ocean Publications

Freshwater & Ocean Workshops & Seminars

Contact the Freshwater & Ocean Programs