Policy
Water is currently managed unsustainably through siloed, big-pipe and linear solutions in water and wastewater infrastructure in cities and towns, in flood control, and in agriculture. Federal subsidies and mandates have reinforced, if not outright locked-in, this approach.
National leadership is needed to transition water management to a new paradigm of designs and institutions that mimic and work with nature’s design principles: integrated systems, efficiency and closed loops, and adaptation to local context.
Governments at all levels need to widen opportunities and incentives for sustainability and innovation, and in the long-run, realign legislation and regulations in support of new models, markets, and institutions.
- Short-term Strategies: A series of low-cost measures to facilitate and coordinate better information transfer, including guidance manuals, evaluations of new products and designs, conferences, newsletters, training, and labeling and standard-setting initiatives
- Research, Development, and Pilot Projects: Research to explore the centrality of water to planetary ecosystem functions, biomimicry design principles, new technologies, eco-block or neighborhood demonstration projects, economics of complex systems, and use of federal facilities as sites for early adoption
- Incentives: Support for creative designs in local communities, in innovative companies and research labs, in schools, military bases, and homes, through EPA’s Clean Water SRF and other infrastructure programs throughout the federal government, through rebates to customers and tax credits for R&D and green investing, and through priority rankings for projects that achieve multiple social and environmental benefits
- Legislative and regulatory reform: Development of policies that encourage sustainability innovation, including broadened tools of asset management, enforcement and compliance based on science and adaptive learning, and a search for ways to break down conflicts and impediments among major pieces of federal legislation, including development of an overarching sustainability act.
More
Federal Policies to Advance Decentralized and Integrated Water Resource Infrastructure
Highlights -- Reports -- Catalogue
21st Century Water and Fiscal Stimulus Transition Statement
Inter-Agency Briefing -- Smart, Clean & Green: 21st Century Water Infrastructure
Statement of Support for Cities and Towns of the Future
Science-based Adaptive Management
Clean Water State Revolving Fund Green Reserve Comments
Progressive State Government
Stimulus Fund Memo