Abstract:
This project is a review and analysis of a regional, interorganizational approach to a
specific water quality protection planning initiative. The rise of interorganizational approaches to
planning, policy making, and project implementation is a current phenomenon noted by many
scholars and practitioners. The network approach is being applied, formally and informally, to
many of the problems facing society today including economic development, public safety,
transportation, and a wide range of social services. Also, due to the broad scope and
complexities of many natural resource issues, it is becoming a favored approach among natural
resource academicians and professionals.
This project is an attempt to better understand how these emerging approaches, involving
extensive networks of various types of organizations, work when applied to The Clean Water
Act's Total Maximum Daily Load program implementation. It focuses on how this federal-level
mandate gets implemented at the local level and how local organizations can optimize a
cooperative process to meet these requirements.
