Environmental Law Institute Wet Growth: Should Water Law Control Land Use?

It is unrealistic and unwise to believe that water law will or should govern land use decisions, or alternatively that land use planning and regulation will or should govern water management. Nonetheless, the initially unsettling question of whether one area of law and policy should control the other provokes discussion and reflection on both why and how we might move toward greater integration of land and water controls. Wet Growth: Should Water Law Control Land Use? was written as a means to disseminate new ideas about the land/water interface in law and policy and provides an overview of the relevant issues, current trends toward integrating land and water controls, and prospects for further progress. The authors of this book describe the nature and costs of our currently fragmented management of land and water resources that results in unsustainable practices and suggest principles that should guide and direct our response to these problems. Although they take differing perspectives, the authors share common, or at least overlapping, observations about the fragmentation and integration of land and water controls.