Water in Comprehensive Plans

The Colorado River Basin states have some of the fastest-growing communities in the country (U.S. Census Bureau 2021 Citation). To accommodate this growth, changes to land use policies must be more closely connected to water availability. The CRBAAS is arid and already facing severe water scarcity. Communities in this region increasingly recognize that they need to manage development differently in order to balance growth with water availability.

A community’s long-range planning process—often culminating in a comprehensive or general plan—is the foundation to its land use efforts. Covering land use as well as city operations, infrastructure, and services, comprehensive plans Definition include critical provisions for protecting community resources, whether they are man-made or part of the natural environment. Nevertheless, water management Definition is often missing from comprehensive plans.

Across the Colorado River Basin, only Arizona and Utah specifically require a water element within a comprehensive plan—and Utah only as of 2022. Colorado provides statutory guidance for an optional water element but ties certain funding opportunities to whether a local government has an updated comprehensive plan with a water element in place (Rugland 2022 Citation). Information about the planning statutes for each Colorado River Basin state, except for Utah and Colorado’s recent updates, can be found in Incorporating Water into Comprehensive Planning—A Manual for Land Use Planners in the Colorado River Basin (Rugland 2020 Citation).

Land use planning shapes a community’s water demand. From land use codes to infrastructure planning, land use planning presents many opportunities for communities to become more water efficient and resilient. Thus, water must be incorporated into comprehensive plans so a community can improve its water resiliency and sustainability.

Our goal in evaluating water integration within comprehensive plans is to establish a reference point from which to track change over time, gauging whether this integration changes or improves as water sustainability challenges deepen. Additionally, because comprehensive plans cover current conditions and future goals, they can indicate a community’s water priorities, providing a way to understand its integrated water policies and programs—or lack thereof.

Water in Comprehensive Plans Indicators

We reviewed our 37 Indicator Cities’ comprehensive plans to include important water components based on a novel framework developed by the Babbitt Center.¹ Comprehensive plans were evaluated based on whether they included water elements in 20 topics across three primary categories: water management, future projections Definition, and water-efficient land use Definition. The full breakdown is shown in the table below.

Communities received scores between 0 and 3 for their discussion of water. A value of 0 was given if the category was absent or not discussed in the comprehensive plan. Values of 1, 2, or 3 were given based on whether the plans describe, analyze, or integrate the topic area into their planning. The scores for each topic within a category were then averaged to determine the category’s overall score. The three category scores were averaged to give a score for the plan’s total discussion of water across topics. The table below shows the specifications for awarding each value for each topic area as well as the scoring scale.

Incorporating Water into Comprehensive Planning: A Manual for Land Use Planners in the Colorado River Basin.

Criteria for rating water elements included in comprehensive plans. Developed and described in Incorporating Water into Comprehensive Planning: A Manual for Land Use Planners in the Colorado River Basin (Rugland 2020 Citation).

Overall, our sample of CRBAAS Definition communities appear to be meaningfully incorporating water management into conservation plans. Though improvements can be made, the average aggregate score for the six water elements in the Water Management group was 1.69, and the positive average score (excluding communities with 0’s) was 2.14, as shown in the table below. This suggests that communities discussing water are, for the most part, analyzing these topics in future planning.

Water Use/Demand and Water Financing were the most often omitted and lowest-quality elements in the Water Management category, highlighting the need to focus on these areas. Existing Water Supplies, Water and Wastewater Infrastructure, and General Water Conservation Programs were included most often, and were the highest-quality topics across all communities. It is promising that many communities have been thinking about wastewater infrastructure and discussing overall water supply and availability within comprehensive plans that frame a vision of future growth.

Within the topic of Future Planning, the average aggregate score of the six water elements across all 37 communities is 1.48, while the positive average (excluding communities with 0’s) is 2.0, which means that communities in the Basin are planning for the future with water in mind, even if they are not fully integrating the topic into their comprehensive plans. See the table below.

The highest-quality water element among comprehensive plans in the Future Projections Indicator group was Water-Related Hazard Mitigation, which focuses on whether a community plans for the possibility that drought or flooding, climate change, or other factors will bring an uncertain future that impacts water availability. These high scores may indicate that the 23-year drought that has persisted across the West, as well as climate change generally, have pushed communities to think about water-related hazard mitigation.

Surprisingly, Projected Population and Economic Change, and Projected Development and Land Use Change were not the highest-quality topics, as these are the core of comprehensive planning. However, this is likely because planners are more likely to talk about these topics in specific terms (growth in specific planning areas, simple breakdowns of population growth rates, and so forth) than to provide a complete overview and the associated implications. Deeper discussion could address the implications of projected population and land use changes, particularly as they affect water supplies and demand (Follingstad 2022 Citation).

The lowest-quality water element within the Future Projections indicator group is Water Equity. Historically, land use planners were often active adversaries of equity through zoning practices that perpetuated segregation (Reece 2018 Citation). This is beginning to change as the profession reckons with its legacy and recognizes the role that planning should play in creating equitable communities. Therefore, applying equity frameworks to water might create additional challenges for planners unfamiliar with the topic.

The Water-Efficient Land Use category earned the lowest aggregate score compared to the other two categories, with an average score of 1.42. However, that may be because this group contains eight topics, and all but the largest cities seem to lack “show me the water” and building/plumbing policies. The average positive score was 2.14, which is the same positive average as that of the Water Management policies as a whole. This suggests that those communities with all the Water-Efficient Land Use topics are either describing or analyzing these components in their comprehensive plans.

“Show me the water” requirements, or assured water supply rules, mean that developers must prove that at least some water supply exists prior to getting approval to build. This is a common, though not universal, law in CRB states with statutory requirements that vary. Arizona communities discussed it the most, since municipal providers in some areas must be designated by the Department of Water Resources. However, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming have a version of these rules as well, and of the communities reviewed, only San Diego mentioned these state requirements. Utah does not have a version of these rules, so communities there would not be expected to mention them in a comprehensive plan (Green and Castle 2017 Citation). Finally, each community reviewed certainly has Building and Plumbing Policies in place, but simply does not mention them—or standards related to water and water efficiency—within the comprehensive plan. Building and Plumbing Policies often, but not always, differ slightly from comprehensive land use planning, which may explain why the topic is not prevalent within CRB comprehensive plans.

The aggregate score for these 37 comprehensive plans was 1.72 out of a possible 3. The average positive score is 2.10, suggesting that most communities have room to better integrate these water elements into future planning. See map below.

In terms of the best plans all around, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, and Santa Fe had the highest ratings, though some context is useful. Flagstaff is a relatively land-locked jurisdiction with limited water supplies, surrounded by public, federal, and agricultural land. Its planning acknowledges this and includes the conversion of agricultural land for water rights and watershed management. Further, Flagstaff is one of the few Arizona communities outside of Active Management Areas to opt in to that program by the Department of Water Resources. Las Vegas’ success can be attributed in part to the vigor of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a regional water provider known for its water conservation programs and, more recently, its avid removal of nonfunctional turf. Phoenix just barely lands among the highest-ranking plans; it got there thanks to its policies related to General Water Conservation Programs, Water and Wastewater Infrastructure, Water Supply Diversification, Water-Efficient Urban Form and Zoning Regulations, Stormwater Management, and Water for Ecosystem Functions. San Diego is a pioneer in using water desalination to supplement its water supply and has access to Colorado River surface water, provided by Metropolitan Water District and the Imperial Irrigation District, which also supply to major agricultural regions in Southern California. Both desalinated water and these Colorado River surface supplies are costly. Thus, the city takes water resources and infrastructure very seriously. Finally, the City of Santa Fe has an older (1999) but still excellent plan. This is due in part to the serious drought that gripped New Mexico during the 1990s, spurring Santa Fe to pass many of the water policies and programs detailed in its comprehensive plan.

Given this context, high-quality plans seem likely to exist in communities with more resources (staff or funds), stark water resource challenges and the foresight to intervene accordingly, and a sophisticated water resources department or water provider. Plans that are of moderate or low quality according to this evaluation may not lack these things—several well-resourced communities and water providers are represented in the “describes” and “analyzes” categories—but these communities may not have incorporated these resources into the comprehensive plan. Further, several communities evaluated may lack capacity in planning (small planning staff, low budgets, etc.) or in water services (small staff, low budgets, or a siloed or private water provider that has not historically collaborated with the planning department on long-range planning). Comprehensive plans—and the resources required to put them together—are incredibly context-specific, requiring differing levels of resources, time, and knowledge.

Summary of Water in Comprehensive Plans in the CRBAAS

The 37 Indicator Cities reviewed, for the most part, still have a way to go in integrating water into land use planning. If the plans reviewed are considered representative of the CRBAAS, then CRBAAS communities are doing a moderate job—the “analyzes” level—of integrating water into comprehensive plans. That beats ranking at the lowest level—“describes”—but it leaves room for improvement, particularly given the unmistakable water challenges facing the Basin. To some extent, this is to be expected, given that until this year, Arizona was the only state that required communities to have a water element within comprehensive plans, and planning for water is not standard within comprehensive planning or the urban planning profession generally.

The best-reviewed plans—for Flagstaff, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, and Santa Fe—clearly take the topic of water very seriously and include in-depth information about their water systems. They examine the implications of future population growth, land use change, and climate change on those water systems; and they propose policies with implementation responsibility or timelines to achieve these goals. This review does not critique whether these water management strategies are innovative or progressive or will meet the community’s future challenges; it indicates that sound water management is a high priority within the community.

By establishing this baseline for comprehensive plans across these communities, we can track progress over time. This will be particularly interesting and useful as communities across the Colorado River Basin start to incorporate water into land use planning to conserve water and reduce overall demand for it. It is also a useful measurement to potentially track changes in state policies or statutes. For example, we can examine whether and to what extent Utah’s water plans improve now that the state requires a Water Use and Preservation Element within comprehensive plans, to be implemented by December 31, 2025.

Land use authorities and water management agencies share the crucial responsibility of providing the means for their residents and customers to survive and thrive. Integrating land use and water management planning is a critical way communities can address the interrelated challenges of climate change, ongoing population growth, and increasingly variable water supplies. See the methods section for detailed discussions of limitations, assumptions, and the applicability of comprehensive plans in actual future planning efforts. Also see the report Incorporating Water into Comprehensive Planning—A Manual for Land Use Planners in the Colorado River Basin (Rugland 2020 Citation) for ways to turn theoretical discussion into action.