Current water management policies are clearly unable
to meet this goal. United States laws and regulations
for water are implemented in a management
context that focuses primarily on the lowest acceptable
water quality, minimal flows, and single-species protection.
Literally dozens of different government entities
in the United States have a say in what goes into
water or how water is used and redistributed, and the
goals of one agency are often at cross-purposes with
those of others (van der Leeden et al. 1990). A fundamental
change in water management policies is needed,
one that embraces a much broader view of the dynamic
nature of freshwater resources and the short- and
long-term benefits they provide.
Our educational practices are equally inadequate to
the challenge of sustainable water resource management.
Hydrologists, engineers, and water managers, the
people who design and manage our nation’s water resource
systems, are rarely taught about management
consequences to ecosystems, nor are ecologists trained
to think about the critical role of water in human society.
Economists, developers, and politicians seldom
project far enough into the future to fully account for
the potential ecological costs of short-term plans. Few
Americans are aware of the infrastructure that brings
them pure tap water or carries their wastes away, and
fewer still understand the ecological trade-offs that
were made to allow these conveniences. How can society
extract the water resources it needs while not
diminishing the important natural complexity and
adaptive capacity of freshwater ecosystems? The requirements
of freshwater ecosystems are often at odds
with human activity, although this need not always be
the case. Our present state of ecological understanding
of how freshwater ecosystems function allows us to
elaborate the requirements of freshwater ecosystems
regarding adequate quantity, quality, and timing of water
flow. Communication of these requirements to a