October 14, 2003

CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES DIRECTOR TAPPED FOR EXPERTISE AT HOME AND ABROAD

With well over 30 years experience in tackling difficult water management issues and inter-community cooperation, Dr. Jeffrey Featherstone’s extensive knowledge is being tapped both here and abroad.

Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell has appointed Dr. Featherstone, Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities at Temple University Ambler and Chair of the Department of Community and Regional Planning, to the Delaware Basin Regional Water Resources Committee.

The committee has been developed as a result of the Water Resources Planning Act signed into law in December 2002. As part of the act, the DEP is required to develop a State Water Plan within the next five years, working with both regional committees and a statewide committee whose membership includes environmental, local government, technical and water user interests.

“The state water plan most likely will consist of several basin plans instead of a one-size-fits-all scheme. The last water resources plan was developed circa 1980, a giant document that is outdated and needs extensive reworking,” said Dr. Featherstone. “At its core, the goal of past planning was to supply water to meet just about every demand. Today, planning considers both the availability of supply, the accessibility to alternative sources, as well as the impacts that water withdrawals may have on environmental needs and community planning.”

According to the state, the resulting state plan will help answer three basic questions: How much water do we have? How is the water being used? Where will the demand for water outstrip the supply?

“A critical issue will be to determine how much water we need to keep in our streams to protect aquatic life,” Dr. Featherstone said. “That is information that we don’t currently have.”

As an expert in developing inter-governmental agreements and issues surrounding water and environmental issues, Dr. Featherstone will travel to New Delhi, India, to take part in a global dialogue on Federalism from November 14 to 16. The theme of the conference is “Distribution of Powers and Responsibilities in federal Polities.”

The conference is part of a joint program between the Forum of Federations in Canada and the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies (IACFS).

“The broad objective of the conference is to develop a comparative assessment of how powers and responsibilities are distributed and managed in various federal systems,” said Barbara Brook, Program Office for the Forum of Federations. “In order to achieve this, we will bring together practitioners and academic experts to share their knowledge and to discuss common problems, issues, concerns, and best practices.”

According to Dr. Featherstone, some of the largest “federal” issues pertain to “how we deal with problems that transcend state and local boundaries.”

“In many cases, from the federal government to states and then to local municipalities, various types of administrative agreements are necessary just to get people to work together to solve problems and implement solutions,” he said. “Temple actually has a Center for the Study of Federalism that likely has more documents on the subject than any other location in the country.”

Dr. Featherstone said his primary interest in attending the conference is determining “how other countries are dealing with water and watershed issues.”

“Obviously many countries are facing water issues more severe than we are; are they successful?” he said. “Are they set up like us or do they grant more administrative power over land use and water resources to state and regional governments as opposed to local government? In the United Kingdom there are 30 water companies, whereas in the United States there are 70,000. It is part of the decentralization and fragmentation of the country yet, in spite of ourselves, we are presented as a model for the rest of the world.”

CONTACT: James Duffy, (215) 283-1290, duffyj@temple.edu, release available by e-mail