ASSESSING CROSS-JURISDICTIONAL WATER GOVERNANCE IN THE COEUR D’ ALENE BASIN

Kinsey  Ayers

Water quality governance in the United States is faced with “wicked problems”, such as how to effectively manage nonpoint source pollution across political boundaries. For example, many Western U.S. watersheds have been contaminated by mining activity or excessive nutrient inputs, resulting in downstream impacts that span political boundaries and require collaboration across different regulatory entities. Despite these complex water quality issues, little guidance exists for how to effectively assess collaboration across jurisdictions for improved water quality outcomes. Specifically, while federal policies, such as the Clean Water Act, mandate water quality standards, they offer limited guidance on the complex cross-jurisdictional coordination required to control nonpoint source pollution. Consequently, evaluating the quality, rather than just the presence, of collaborative governance is critical to understanding governance systems and the barriers to effective cross-jurisdictional management. This dissertation seeks to fill this gap through the creation and utilization of a novel collaborative governance quality framework. This framework is applied to a case study of cross-jurisdictional water quality management in the Coeur d’Alene Basin, a headwater system of the Columbia River Basin. A document analysis applying the novel framework is conducted, spanning four decades comparing the communication and actions of four governance entities managing Coeur d’Alene Lake: the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and Kootenai County. This chapter provides the first of its kind longitudinal document analysis of cross-jurisdictional collaborative governance quality with implications for cross-jurisdictional water governance in the United States. Lastly, applying the novel framework once more, interviews are conducted across the same four entities to assess collaborative governance quality from the perspective of the practitioner with the goal of identifying successes and barriers to successful collaboration. Broadly, this dissertation highlights the need to assess the quality of collaboration across governance systems for more effective cross-jurisdictional cooperation and subsequent improved policy implementation.

ASSESSING CROSS-JURISDICTIONAL WATER GOVERNANCE IN THE COEUR D’ ALENE BASIN

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