The following is an except from the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy’s Incorporating Water into Comprehensive Planning manual, released February 28, 2020

Land use planning and water management are siloed disciplines that often operate independently, despite the important overlaps between the two and the mutual benefits of working together. Integrating land use planning and water management can help communities grow more sustainably. Municipalities and counties that execute smart decisions about water before development begins are better positioned to deal with water scarcity and other challenges, thereby minimizing reliance on water conservation programs or incentives that reduce demand during drought.

An effective way to integrate water management into land use planning is to incorporate it into a comprehensive plan. Different land uses and building types have distinct impacts on water demand, while water supply can influence the cost and location of development. In order to make informed, sustainable decisions about land use, many communities will have to consider the impact of those decisions on water resources. A comprehensive plan lays out a community’s vision for its future, and the policies and land uses that will help to realize that vision. Incorporating Water into Comprehensive Planning: A Manual for Land Use Planners in the Colorado River Basin details how land use planners in the seven Colorado River Basin states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) can create a comprehensive planning process that ensures enough water for all residents of the region in the years ahead.

Western communities face increasing threats to the sustainability of their water supplies. Growing demand calls for careful management of water and of land uses that impact water resources. The demonstrable connections between land and water are receiving greater attention as local governments begin to understand how decisions about land use can dramatically impact water demand. Strategies that impact urban form, such as compact development, infill development, or smaller lot sizes, can drive down water use when compared to single-family homes on large lots. Pervious cover and green infrastructure can help direct stormwater and other runoff into water recharge areas. Land use codes of all types can be used to improve water efficiency indoors, on landscapes, and throughout entire neighborhoods of a community.

A community’s comprehensive plan is the foundation of all its land use efforts. These plans become the means to capture a community’s vision of the future—a future that should include a sustainable water supply. Local government officials, professional and citizen planners, and developers use comprehensive plans to inform their land use decisions. Often, such plans do not include water management. Most Colorado River Basin states require or encourage local governments to prepare a comprehensive plan. But even states that offer robust guidance on local planning do not require water to be an element of plans. Some states suggest that local governments include water as an optional element. Often, local governments recognize the importance of integrated water and land use planning and voluntarily include water in their comprehensive plan.

The absence of water from comprehensive plans represents a tremendous missed opportunity. The comprehensive plan can enable a community to bring its goals and policies for water issues to the forefront of its vision of the future. It can set the stage for water to be woven into development approval processes, zoning and subdivision standards, and development decisions. The public outreach requirement of a comprehensive plan creates an opportunity to educate the public about water resources, provides a time and place for public input on their jurisdiction’s water future, and fosters public buy-in for a more sustainable future.

Water conservation policies that target individual end-users in an already built community have improved. However, local governments can use their land use planning authority to influence water use before a development is constructed by integrating water issues into their comprehensive plans.

Incorporating Water into Comprehensive Planning: A Manual for Land Use Planners in the Colorado River Basin describes how to use a comprehensive plan to ensure water sustainability and presents best practices from across the Colorado River Basin states. Communities that might be overwhelmed by the complexities of water management or uncertain about the relevant information to include, can use the examples provided therein from plans that local governments in the region have put into practice. The following quick-start guide can serve as a reference for the concepts explained in the manual.

Quick-Start Planning Guide

FOR INCORPORATING WATER INTO COMPREHENSIVE PLANS

There are four essential actions a community must take to incorporate water into its comprehensive plan (figure 1). The first is instrumental to the others. These steps are described in detail in the Overview of the Planning Process section of the manual.

Figure 1: Steps to Integrate Water into Planning. Source: Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy — Figure 1: Steps to Integrate Water into Planning. *Source: Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy*

Numerous water-related topics are relevant to the comprehensive plan, such as supply, demand, quality, stormwater management, natural hazards, and stream protection. The topics ultimately included depend on the most pressing water issues facing a community. Equally relevant are any opportunities or commitments that arise from internal and external demands. Examples include emergent problems such as an acute water shortage or persistent flooding, any new or ongoing federal or state grants and program requirements regarding water, and any other community goal related to water that arises prior to or during the comprehensive planning process.

Communities can write a stand-alone water element or, include a section on water within another plan element, such as a public facilities or environment element. A stand-alone water element signals to residents, stakeholders, and decision-makers that the community considers water policies to be as important as other core elements of a plan, like housing, transportation, economic development, and land use. Similarly, water issues should be included in other plan elements as appropriate.

By their nature, comprehensive plans have goals, policies, and objectives that overlap and influence one another. There may also be goals that appear to compete with one another. For instance, a community might want to maintain a pro-growth stance despite water supply constraints. Communities should integrate water issues with other policies and goals to determine how competing objectives can be reconciled into a cohesive vision.

The questions in Figure 2 can prompt a land and water planning team and the community in general to determine which water issues to consider including in their plan. These questions supplement the Water Topics and Examples sections that make up the bulk of the manual, and can be used to quickly generate ideas about which water topics may be most relevant to a community or which questions need additional data and understanding to answer. They could also be used in a public brainstorming workshop to gauge community members’ knowledge and values about local water systems and issues.

Figure 2: Water-Related Questions to Answer in a Comprehensive Planning Process. Source: Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy — Figure 2: Water-Related Questions to Answer in a Comprehensive Planning Process. *Source: Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy*

Read the manual in its entirety at bit.ly/water-in-comp-plans.

Erin Rugland is a junior research fellow at the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy. She has led the Babbitt Center’s comprehensive plan evaluation project since its inception and is a co-author of Best Practices for Implementing Water Conservation and Demand Management Through Land Use Planning Efforts: Addendum to 2012 Guidance Document, adopted by the State of Colorado in 2019. She has dual B.S. degrees in Public Policy and Justice Studies from Arizona State University.