An Implementation Analysis of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986

Abstract

Implementation research, an area once largely ignored in favor of policy design and impact assessment, now constitutes a significant portion of the policy analysis literature. One of the key issues addressed by the theory building portion of that literature is the necessity of precisely identifying implementation variables, conditions, or actions that measurably contribute to the success or failure of implementation efforts over a broad range of policies and programs, and to then suggest some order of significance. In order to test the validity of a variable set proposed by the literature, a multivariate implementation model was employed as the basis of a case study designed to conduct both a process and impact analysis of the implementation of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 (WRDA 86). Implementation of the WRDA 86 was selected for this research as it offered an opportunity to investigate implementation of a significant policy change in an established policy arena , the water resource development industry. Following ten years of failure to achieve agreement on an omnibus water resource appropriation, passage of the WRDA 86 was widely perceived to have signaled a new era of water resource development for the nation. It will likely be a period characterized by the transfer of the financial burden of planning, construction, and maintenance of water resource projects from the Federal government to the non-Federal sponsor/beneficiary. The transfer will be achieved by application of cost-sharing formulas contained in WRDA 86 and affirmed in subsequent biannual omnibus water resource development legislation. Cost-sharing and similar beneficiary-pay principles had long been considered as an efficient alternative to water resource programs which relied principally on Federal funding owing to the long held assumption that the benefit from such projects were so "widespread and general" as to be in the national interest. Incorporation of cost-sharing principles in water resource legislation ensured that appropriation language would require local project beneficiaries to assume a larger portion of project costs. In addition to the assumption that application of the principles would lead to economically efficient projects it was also argued that cost-sharing and increased local sponsor input would lead to smaller projects that better reflected local need, projects with greater emphasis on environmental concerns, and the construction of projects in stages or phases. The research proceeded with an implementation process analysis to test the model's assumption that specific variables or conditions may be identified as having the greatest

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