Computer Aided Negotiations of Water Resources Disputes
An Inter-disciplinary Roleplaying Course

Mini-Lecture Library

The mini-lectures are short (one to five minute) video presentations that cover a single concept. They are stand alone presentations—students may be assigned one or more; however, for some topics watching the first couple of mini-lectures provides useful context for the later mini-lectures. (The full lectures are available in the Lecture Library.)

Mini-Lecture Topics:

• Performance Measures (Megan Rivera)
• Delaware River Basin Biology (Ken Wagner)
• Environmental Economics (John Boland)
• Reservoir Operations (Megan Rivera)
• Cooperative Water Management in the Potomac River Basin (Mark Lorie)
• Shared Vision Planning (Stacy Langsdale)
• Eastern Water Law (Lewis Jones)
• Delaware River Basin Policy (Pamela Bush)
• Public Policy and Negotiations (Linda Manning)

Performance Measures (Megan Rivera)

Megan Rivera developed and teaches the course at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She is a senior water resources engineer with HydroLogics and a former professor of Civil Engineering at The City College of New York.

1. What is a PM?—Performance measures provide a way to assess how well a system is performing for a management objective. Some of the typical interests involved in water resources problems are discussed in addition to the importance of performance measures in the negotiations process.
   
2. Developing a PM—A walkthrough of how performance measures are developed through iterative processes. Begins with a simple plot of lake stage versus time and finishes with a meaningful performance measure of wading bird nesting.
   
3. Introduction to the ACF Basin—A context-setting overview of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint. Examples in the Performance Measures Mini-Lectures come from stakeholder processes that happened in the ACF River Basin.
   
4. Example PM - Mussels—When flows get low, mussels suffer stress from high temperatures. The goal of the PM is to capture the percent of years where certain low flow thresholds are crossed.
   
5. Example PM - Sturgeon 1—Maintaining sturgeon habitat during spawning season is critical to sustaining the sturgeon population in the ACF. A PM is presented that captures the seasonality of the objective as well as the necessity of consecutive spawning days. Frequency distribution curves are explained.
   
6. Example PM - Sturgeon 2—Sometimes more water is not always better. A PM where excess water is detrimental to performance highlights the importance of PMs in the development and evaluation of management regimes.
   
7. Example PM - Recreation 1—Provides examples of PMs that gauge the impact on lake recreation.
   
8. Example PM - Recreation 2—A further refinement of the previous recreation PMs to capture multi-year recreation impact events reflecting the impact of such events on local economies.
   
9. Example PM - Water Supply—A PM that captures the frequency of reservoir stages, important for those responsible for maintaining water supply reliability for a city.
   

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Delaware River Basin Biology (Ken Wagner)

Ken Wagner is a widely respected fisheries biologist who has worked and performed studies in the Delaware River Basin.

1. Fish—Covers the importance of fish in the Delaware River as a recreational resource, an economic driver, and a political driver. The development of the cold water fishery below Cannonsville Reservoir and the resulting conflict between native and stocked fish species are discussed.
   
2. Invertebrates—The ecological and political importance of endangered mussels and other invertebrates in the river as well as the economical importance of shellfish and horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay is covered.
   
3. Hoffman Springs Example—Ken Wagner provides an overview of a project he worked on in the Delaware River Basin. He explains the issues with deriving a relationship between fish biomass and mean summer flows and then discusses an alternative approach.
   
4. Overall Conclusions—Important aspects of the Delaware system's resources, politics, economics, and ecology are discussed. The overview includes important points for stakeholders to keep in mind as they develop operating strategies.
   

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Environmental Economics (John Boland)

John Boland is a renowned environmental economist and professor emeritus of geography and environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

1. Costs and Benefits—A brief explanation of cost benefit analysis.
   
2. Measuring Costs and Benefits—The difference between market and nonmarket goods is explained along with the impact of the type of good on measuring costs and benefits.
   
3. Nonmarket Goods and Kinds of Value—Measuring the value of nonmarket goods requires more complex techniques than market goods as there is no cash flow involved with nonmarket goods. Revealed preference and stated preference methods are discussed as options for measurement. Additionally, use value and intrinsic value are explained.
   
4. Intrinsic Values Class Discussion—The class discusses examples of the types of intrinsic values.
   
5. Nonmarket Good Valulation: Revealed Preference Methods—The various options for applying revealed preference methods are covered.
   
6. Nonmarket Good Valulation: Stated Preference Methods 1—The general form of a stated preference method involves surveying. The challenges involved with surveying are discussed.
   
7. Nonmarket Good Valulation: Stated Preference Methods 2—Various contingent stated preference methods are covered as options for formulating a survey.
   
8. Types of Bias—All survey based methods are subject to bias. The difference between bias and error is explained and an overview of the different types of bias is provided.
   

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Reservoir Operations (Megan Rivera)

Megan Rivera developed and teaches the course at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She is a senior water resources engineer with HydroLogics and a former professor of Civil Engineering at The City College of New York.

1. The Hydrologic Cycle—An overview of the cycle responsible for transporting water into the watershed, along with a brief listing of the watershed inputs and outputs.
   
2. Conservation of Mass 1—The basic concept of accounting for the mass in a control volume is explained along with some considerations for balancing water.
   
3. Conservation of Mass 2—The common inputs and outputs to a water system control volume are grouped into broad terms: outflow, net evapotranspiration, net demands, and unimpaired inflow. Unimpaired inflows are explained in more detail.
   
4. Unimpaired Inflow—Defines unimpaired inflows as the flows with all of the human uses taken out. Student questions about calculating unimpaired inflows are answered. (Audio Only)
   
5. Consumptive Use—When water is withdrawn from the system and is not returned then the use is consumptive. Student questions about calculating the consumptive uses are answered.
   
6. Pre Dam vs Post Dam—A discussion of whether a dam impacts the quantity of water in the basin.
   
7. Benefits of Reservoirs—A brief overview of some benefits of having and managing a reservoir.
   
8. Flood Attenuation—Explains the ability of a full reservoir to attenuate flood flows.
   
9. Example of Local Hydrology—An example of how understanding the local hydrology is important for creating successful management strategies.
   

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Cooperative Water Management in the Potomac River Basin (Mark Lorie)

Mark Lorie was the deputy director for water supply planning at the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB) and is currently involved in water resources dispute resolution.

1. Introduction to the ICPRB—Provides an overview of the focus of the river basin commission as well as an overview of the contents of the entire presentation.
   
2. Potomac River Basin Overview—Covers the geographic context of the river and its reservoirs and provides some general information about the basin.
   
3. Potomac River Hydrology—Plots showing the range of historical Potomac River flows are used to illustrate the need for a drought management plan for the basin.
   
4. Problem Solving to Meet Future Demand—Describes an example of collaborative modeling and negotiation in which utilities cooperated and obviated the need to build sixteen reservoirs.
   
5. The Water Supply Coordination Agreement—Describes the coordinated management of the Potomac River Basin.
   
6. The ICPRB's Role—Explains what is involved in being the technical and administrative lead in the coordinated Potomac River system.
   
7. Cooperative Management Outcomes—A discussion of the benefits of the coordinated management and the keys to the continued success of the cooperation.
   
8. Why use Shared Vision Planning (SVP)—Explains the motivations for using a group decision process and especially the importance of coming to a consensus on the science so the stakeholders can focus on their interests.
   
9. SVP Overview—Explains the steps and key themes of the SVP process, as well as why the process is more relevant now than ever.
   

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Shared Vision Planning (Stacy Langsdale)

Stacy Langsdale conducts policy research for the Conflict Resolution & Public Participation Center of Expertise at the U.S. Army Corps' Institute for Water Resources in Alexandria, Virginia. She is the Chair of the Best Practices for Collaborative Modeling Task Committee.

1. Water Resources Problems are Complex—Various reasons for why water resources management is a complex endeavor.
   
2. Integrated Assessment—A description of integrated assessment which involves combining discrete approaches to an analysis into a broad, integrated context.
   
3. Why Use Shared Vision Planning—Discusses the importance of involving stakeholders in the modeling process.
   
4. Understanding the System—When stakeholders collaborate on a model their various assumptions are laid out and evaluated, often times leading to a situation where everyone better understands the system. (Audio Only)
   

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Eastern Water Law (Lewis Jones)

Lewis Jones is a counsel with King & Spalding, LLC whose focus is on water law and water resources. He is actively involved in the Alabama-Georgia-Florida water disputes.

1. Riparianism vs Prior Appropriation—Discusses the differences between Eastern (Riparianism) and Western (Prior Appropriation) Law systems governing water allocation.
   
2. Riparianism and Reasonable Use—Explains the "Reasonable Use" doctrine that governs Riparian permit approvals.
   
3. Riparian Owners—Defines and elaborates on who qualifies as a Riparian in Eastern Law Systems
   
4. Regulated Riparianism—Clarifies the typical implementation of Riparian law systems, and concessions made when moving from theory to reality.
   
5. Interbasin Transfers—Discusses the most contentious aspect of water regulation, interbasin transfers of water.
   
6. Surface Water vs Groundwater Law—Explains the differences in regulation styles between surface and ground water.
   
7. The Law of Equitable Apportionment—Elaborates on the methods states can settle water allocation issues that encompass more than one state.
   
8. Federal-State Issues—Overview of issues between Federal Bureau jurisdiction and State jurisdiction in water issues.
   

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Delaware River Basin Policy (Pamela Bush)

Pamela Bush is the Delaware River Basin Commission Secretary and Assistant General Counsel.

1. Water Quality and Commission Structure—The Commission's approach to water quality is discussed, including an overview of Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL). Additionally, the structure of the commission and the way in which commission members typically vote on regulations is explained.
   
2. Drought of Record and Good Faith Agreements—During the 1960's drought of record the relationships between the states (and NYC) involved in the management of the Delaware River were strained. A discussion of the outcome of cooperative management during the drought is followed by a description of the Good Faith Agreements, which is the drought plan negotiated after the end of the drought.
   
3. The Flexible Flow Management Plan (FFMP)—The goals and motivations behind the development of the FFMP are explained along with criticisms of the program by stakeholder groups.
   
4. Fishery and Flood Mitigation Interests—The Excess Release Quantity (ERQ) is defined and discussed. Since this approach does not work well during dry periods, the efforts of the fisheries interests to gain more of a say in the management of the flows to support fish are discussed. In addition, the involvement of flood mitigation interests who advocate for voids in the reservoirs to ameliorate high flow is covered.
   

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Public Policy and Negotiations (Linda Manning)—Audio Only

Linda Manning is a mediator whose focus is natural resources and environmental issues. She is the founder and president of the Council Oak consulting firm.

1. BATNAs—Definition and description of what makes a "Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement."
   
2. Dealing with Uncertainty—A discussion of how to deal with uncertainty in negotiations.
   
3. How To Do A Situation Assessment—A description of how to perform a Situation Assessment before the negotiations themselves occur.
   
4. Incorporating Models in Negotiations—Discusses how models are used in negotiation processes.
   
5. Representation In Water Disputes—Discusses who needs to be represented in a negotiation session.
   
6. Science Models In Policy Questions—Describes what happens when people try to use scientific models to try and solve inherently political problems.
   
7. Weighting Values—A discussion of how to compare different value sets across participants in a negotiation.
   

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