Law Commons^™

A Watershed Issue: The Role Of Streamflow Protection In Northwest River Basin Management, Reed D. Benson

Faculty Scholarship

Watershed management has become a popular approach to environmental problems in the Northwest. Federal, regional, state, local, and tribal watershed efforts are in progress throughout the region. The popularity of the watershed approach can be traced to ecological and political factors. Most watershed management activities, however, focus more on land use and riparian measures than on providing and protecting instreamflows. For both legal and political reasons, watershed efforts tend to avoid water rights issues. Such efforts tend not to be well connected with instream flow protection or water resource planning under state law. Unless they address the need for streamflows, …