Water Pollution in the Green Mountain State: A Case Study of Law, Science, and Culture in the Management of Public Water Resources

The Shape of Watershed Governance: Locating the Boundaries of Multiplex Networks

“…Where the general governance network literature tends to examine conceptual or theoretical networks, the literature on watershed governance networks is able to examine specific governance networks (Imperial, 2005;Schneider, Scholz, Lubell, Mindruta, & Edwardsen, 2003;Weible & Sabatier, 2005). The research on watershed networks includes a wide body of literature on the benefits and requirements of cooperation and coordination in networks (Hirschi, 2010;Imperial, 2005;Jost & Jacob, 2004;Lubell & Fulton, 2008;Schneider et al, 2003;Scholz, Berardo, & Kile, 2008;Weible & Sabatier, 2005), planning (Dutcher & Blythe, 2012;Koontz & Johnson, 2004;Lienert, Schnetzer, & Ingold, 2013), knowledge diffusion and learning (Betsill & Bulkeley, 2004;Cash et al, 2003;Newig, Guenther, & Pahl-Wostl, 2010;Vignola, McDaniels, & Scholz, 2013), and system scaling (Cohen & Davidson, 2011;Norman & Bakker, 2009;Vignola et al, 2013), all of which are harnessed to build theories that apply to all governance networks. What the watershed governance literature continues to miss is a focus on implementation networks and the network reactions to policy decisions (Rykkja, Neby, & Hope, 2014).…”

“…The basin is the site of farming communities, particularly in Vermont and Quebec, and has struggled to meet its water quality requirements under the Clean Water Act. The arrangements made to govern the LCB and its sub-basins (Dutcher & Blythe, 2012;Osherenko, 2014) require interaction and collaboration across state and national borders in order to expand governance structures throughout the watershed. Vermont, with limited state budgets and producing the largest share of pollution, particularly from non-point sources (Lake Champlain Basin Program [LCBP], 2012; Osherenko, 2014), has relied on public-private partnerships for pursuing its water quality goals.…”