Journal
JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT
Volume 61, Issue 4, Pages 617-634Publisher
ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/09640568.2017.1327845
Keywords
collaborative governance; water resources planning and management; process efficiency; FERC hydropower relicensing
Categories
Funding
- School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences
- Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation Stanford Graduate Fellowship Program
- National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Program
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While collaborative governance has many benefits for environmental planning and management, those benefits are not politically feasible if they impact on process efficiency. This study assesses collaboration's effect on the duration of water permitting processes, specifically the United States' Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's hydropower relicensing process. Collaboration was measured using a survey of participants in 24 recent hydropower relicensing processes. A Cox proportional hazards model with mixed effects assessed the relationship between collaboration, regulatory framework, hydropower facility characteristics, and relicensing process duration. Collaboration was not associated with time to license. Instead, process duration depended on the regulatory framework (especially the switch to the Integrated Licensing Process and presence of endangered species) and facility characteristics (generating capacity and facility type). The results suggest that agencies should consider engaging collaboratively during planning and permitting, given that collaboration's benefits to decision quality do not incur a cost on overall process time.
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