Embracing Watershed Politics

Front matter

Edella Schlager AND William Blomquist

Embracing Maters hed) Politics

Embracing Watershed Politics

Contents

Preface vii

1 Complex Landscapes: Watersheds and Institutions 1

2 Watersheds, Politics, and Institutions: Past and Present Assessments 27

Conclusion

Nationwide efforts toward comprehensive, integrated watershed management in the United States have a long and rich history—from large-scale river basin commissions organized by federal law to watershed partnerships organized around smaller, intrastate watersheds. While engaging in such efforts, policy makers, public managers, interest groups, and citizens have repeatedly struggled with answering fundamental political questions. How watershed management unfolded depended on how the questions were answered.

During the river basin development era, the goals were to stimulate economic activity and regional economic development by investing in large-scale multipurpose projects. Participation in planning, development, and construction was limited to government experts who built and operated the projects. Decision making and plan implementation changed over time. Initially, the president, through the National Resources Committee, created by executive order, exercised some control over the development of integrated river basin plans and negotiated with Congress and the federal water agencies over plan implementation. Once Congress eliminated the National Resources Committee, planning floundered on the consensus decision processes of the Federal Interagency River Basin Committee.

Frustration over the limited goals, limited participation, and weak decision-making processes of the river basin development era eventually led to a search for a better way to manage river basins, and a new comprehensive integrated watershed planning and management effort unfolded. Answers to the political questions incrementally changed. Goals and values changed by adding municipal and industrial water users and recreational enthusiasts as beneficiaries of water projects. Decision-making processes changed by formalizing the processes of the previous era into a formally constituted council in the Executive Office of the President that oversees the river basin planning processes of the river basin commissions. Although the council consists only of cabinet secretaries, participation in planning is extended to states, local governments, and citizens through the constitution of the commissions and their use of citizen advisory committees. Furthermore, a federal representative, independent of the federal water agencies, serving as commission chair and controlling an independent staff and budget, was believed to be sufficient to bring the federal agencies on board in developing and supporting integrated river basin plans. Decision-making processes remained the same, however; at all levels, decisions were by consensus, and implementation of plans was voluntary. In the end, most commissions functioned no better at developing and implementing integrated river basin plans than did their predecessors (Derthick 1974).

The watershed movement emerged not only in reaction to the dismantling of the river basin commissions but primarily in reaction to the excesses and shortcomings of more than a decade of environmental regulation (Sabatier, Weible, and Ficker 2005). In some ways, advocates of watershed planning were justified in their harsh criticism of the status quo approaches to water resources management as “fragmented,” “piecemeal,” “inadequate,” “myopic” (Milon, Kiker, and Lee 1998, 38), and the like. Not only were no formal efforts at comprehensive integrated management occurring among the water development agencies (with the dissolution of the council and commissions), but federal efforts appeared all the more fragmented because of the addition of numerous environmental programs spread across different federal agencies, with no attempt to coordinate them either. Consequently, the search for comprehensive integrated management begins again, but in a distinctly different manner.

The answers to the political questions are not just incrementally different, as was the case in the transition between the river basin development and river basin commission eras, but qualitatively different. The overarching goal is ecosystem health to be achieved by mitigating the effects of decades of watershed development. Achieving ecosystem health is a complex process requiring considerable time and information about such things as nonpoint pollution sources and the structure and function of ecosystem processes. Not only are the goals qualitatively different but so is participation. Although government employees are primary participants, so too are the many citizens and representatives of different nonprofit and private organizations. However, decision-making and implementation processes remain similar to those from the previous eras. Watershed partnerships constituted of members from a wide variety of interests and walks of life use consensus decision processes to develop common goals and plans, and implementation of those plans is voluntary. Those that succeed are likely to do so in spite of—not because of—such institutional mechanisms. They have the right combination of leadership, constituency support, and resources that allow them to move forward and act.

Historically, efforts at comprehensive integrated watershed management have failed. Not only has there been no one best way, but whatever way was chosen proved neither comprehensive nor integrated. Why? These efforts have all been grounded in relatively weak coordinating mechanisms, which as Derthick (1974, 143) explains, act as a “‘forum of peers, which is less an organization than a meeting place of organizations. ... The forum is supposed to foster goodwill, facilitate communication in matters of shared interest, and provide a setting within which mutual adjustments may take place, but it lacks authority or other means for inducing mutual adjustments.” Furthermore, particularly in the first two eras, comprehensive integrated planning and management efforts were centrally planned as opposed to responding to pressing needs or problems in particular river basins. Derthick (1974, 227) argues that “for a regional organization to be centrally planned is practically a guarantee that it will be weak and ineffectual.” The reasons are many. Centrally planned organizations “imposed” on river basins are not likely to have strong constituent support, nor are they likely to have independent sources of funding. Also, they typically do not interfere with or challenge the authority of existing agencies. For the most part, they simply reflect the interests of their centralized creators, in this case, the president and Congress (Derthick 1974), who were searching for means of coordinating the federal agencies.

Ironically, a somewhat similar argument may be made in relation to many of the watershed partnerships. Their widespread emergence beginning in the late 1980s was not a coincidence. Numerous federal and state agencies viewed partnerships as promising mechanisms to assist them in addressing particularly vexing environmental problems, such as mitigating non-point source pollution and restoring riparian habitats. Congress and state legislatures alike directed agencies to work with local collaboratives, providing technical expertise and funding (Koontz et al. 2004, 8). Although some partnerships are initiated by citizens and others by governments, they all bear the imprint of governments, from statutorily defined environmental goals to participation by government employees. Whether partnerships accomplish integrated management and a more equitable distribution of power among stakeholders will largely be determined by the actions of governments (Koontz et al. 2004, 184).

If most efforts to create comprehensive integrated watershed management end in failure, is watershed management impossible? Our answer to that question is no, and in the remainder of the book we explain why comprehensive integrated watershed management does not occur and how watershed management typically unfolds instead. As we will explore in the following chapters, answers to both questions are based in politics, in the limits to human decision making and transaction costs, and in the political and organizational features of polycentricity.

In the end, we agree with Derthick’s conclusion (1974, 230): “[I]n the formation of regional organizations with operating or regulatory functions the best results are likely to be achieved ad hoc, in response to particular needs that can be shown to require organization on a regional scale and to require it so urgently that the inevitable costs in administrative confusion are worth paying” (emphasis added). In the following chapters, we examine the many different and inevitable choices that people must repeatedly make in governing the different dimensions of watersheds, choices that are likely to keep integrated management elusive.

1. The sheer volume of literature on watershed management that has been produced in the last twenty years appears to distinguish this period from previous ones. Derthick (1974), in analyzing regional organizations, including river basin compacts and commissions, theorized at the time that little had been written about the appropriate functions or ideal forms for regional organizations because political scientists have paid scant attention. Much of the recent literature is by political scientists (Lubell et al. 2002; Weber 2003; Koontz et al. 2004; Sabatier et al. 2005).

2. This does not prevent contributors to the literature from having different views of its origin, as the following examples attest. “The concept of watershed-based policymaking is not new. In 1878, John Wesley Powell, head of the U.S. Geological Survey, proposed to Congress that new states in the semiarid West be organized and governed in accordance with the appropriate watershed boundaries rather than straight-line political boundaries. For Powell, the watershed was the ideal medium for a new form of self-governance” (McGinnis 1999, 498; see also Bates et al. 1993, 170-171). “The United States Inland Waterways Commission, appointed in the 1890s to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the nation’s interior water resources, ‘reported to Congress in 1908 that each river system—from its headwaters in the mountains to its mouth at the coast—is an integrated system and must be treated as such” (U.S. EPA 1995, 1-1). “The Tennessee Valley Authority became ‘an exploratory concept in soil and water management because of its approach to erosion control; “watershed management” was a term first used there and an agency spawned by the approach—the U.S. Soil Conservation Service—was to have a major influence throughout the world’” (Newson 1997, 97). “Since the 1970s, there has been dramatic and imaginative experimentation with new approaches to water and land resources management at the state and local levels. Many of these efforts have reinvigorated the idea that most water resource problems should be addressed on a watershed basis, and have experimented with ways to achieve a more integrated, or at least better coordinated, resources management” (Nakamura and Born 1993, 807). “One of the most striking and innovative characteristics of water management in the 1990s is a renewed interest in local, generally sub-state watersheds as the preferred administrative unit” (Gregg et al. 1998; see also Kraft et al. 1999, 10).

3. Derthick (1974, 3) characterizes the historical record as a series of intellectual fads and fashions.

4. For additional examples, see Water Resources Activities in the United States: Reviews of National Water Resources During the Past Fifty Years, printed for the use of the Senate Select Committee on National Water Resources, 86th Cong., 1 sess., 1959.

5. These eras are a modification of those used by Wengart (1981), who also used three eras, nineteenth century to 1933, 1933 to 1965, and 1965 to 1980. We drop his first time period and add the contemporary period of “watershed collaboratives.”

6. Prior to 1933, policy makers and technical experts alike expressed considerable interest in comprehensive river basin development. Not until 1933, however, with the creation of the National Planning Board as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act, was there a formal organization charged with coordinating the activities of the different federal water agencies (Holmes 1972). For instance, in the early 1900s a series of high-profile study commissions, such as the Inland Waterways Commission and the National Waterways Commission, issued reports that proposed the creation of bodies to coordinate the work of the several federal water development agencies (Holmes 1972). Also, prior to 1933, the federal water development agencies were all granted powers to engage in planning for comprehensive river basin development. For instance, the Army Corps of Engineers used the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors to review all river basin studies (Horton 1972). However, there was no single person or agency charged with reviewing and coordinating the plans and construction activities of the different agencies.

7. For an excellent analysis of how political issues were addressed in a variety of ways within a single time period, see Koontz et al. (2004).

8. These criteria are commonly accepted in the political science watershed collaborative literature; see Koontz et al. (2004) and Sabatier, Weible, and Ficker (2005).

9. Derthick (1974, 150) quotes Minnesota’s commissioner on the Great Lakes and Souris-Red-Rainy commissions as saying: “The Federal legislation is designed not to create independent state planning bodies to take over planning responsibilities which are too much for Federal agencies to carry. They are designed, instead, to supply a basis of state legitimation for the traditional construction activities of the Federal development agencies, i.e., the Corps of Engineers, the Social Conservation Service, and the Bureau of Reclamation.”

10. As Holmes (1972) notes, in a five-year period between 1949 and 1955, several congressional and presidential study commissions and committees all recommended greater centralization and integration of federal water resources planning and development. Most recommended the creation of an agency in the Executive Office of the President to oversee coordination and integration, supplemented with river basin committees.

11. A water historian may disagree with both assertions, because most river basin commissions had citizen advisory committees, some of which were quite active in thwarting major water projects (McCrea 1980), and the Soil Conservation Service actively engaged in soil erosion and flood control “treatments” of small watersheds since the early 1940s (Holmes 1972). In neither instance, however, were citizens or small watersheds defining aspects of an era until recently.

12. It is important not to attribute too much power to the president to guide and control river basin development. As Holmes (1972) argues, Congress was largely hostile to the efforts of the president to control the activities of the federal water agencies. “The Corps planning work was set up so that Congress made decisions regarding not only general policies of water resources development, but also the choice, timing, and extent of Federal investment in individual projects. . . . [Congress]... considered the President’s attempts to subordinate its planning activities to coordinated executive branch plans and policies to be usurpations of congressional power” (Holmes 1972, 21).

13. As Holmes (1979, 278) noted, “Some contemporary observers considered that the proposed Council would only be another version of Interagency Committee on Water Resources (ICWR), the national interagency committee device of the fifties. They asserted that such committees had proven incapable, because of interagency logrolling, of developing water policies and plans responsive to contemporary problems and majority political demands.”

14. Others have summarized partnership processes as follows. The processes entail stakeholder identification and involvement, leading to consensus on goals and an identification of actions to be taken to reach them, followed by assignment of responsibilities among agencies and organizations, producing implementation to be accompanied by monitoring and evaluation (see, e.g., Goldfarb 1994; U.S. EPA 1991, 2; 1995, 1-4). A more detailed set of process prescriptions for statewide oversight and coordination (U.S. EPA 1995) included the establishment of basin management plans using rotating five-year cycles for the completion of planning, modeling, permitting, and monitoring among all the watersheds within a state.

15. Case studies can be found in Nakamura and Born 1993; U.S. EPA 1995; Kenney 1997; Gregg et al. 1998; Heathcote 1998; Hinchcliffe et al. 1998; Milon, Kiker, and Lee 1998; Reimold 1998; Bolte et al. 1999; Kraft et al. 1999; Sabatier and Quinn 1999; Tucker et al. 1999; Kenney 2000; Weber 2003; Koontz et al. 2004. Leach and Pelkey (2001) reviewed the literature on watershed partnerships, noting that most studies involved one or a few cases and, from the studies, culled 210 “lessons learned.” Grouped into twenty-one themes, the lessons range from funding to adequate scientific and technical information to use of consensus rules (Leach and Pelkey 2001).

16. In a study of national estuary programs by Lubell and colleagues (2002), 60 percent of participants were government officials. In the watershed partnership study by Leach and Sabatier (2005), 57 percent of participants were government officials.

17. Holmes (1972, 13) states: “Multipurpose projects involving public power operations were hailed as ‘experiments in democracy, combining regional economic growth with widespread distribution of benefits among the people.”

18. The Water Resources Council and the river basin commissions did not directly and actively engage environmental values; rather, the federal agencies active in both organizations began addressing environmental values because of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). For example, the effects of the NEPA on the Army Corps of Engineers included more public participation, such as well-publicized hearings beginning at pre-planning stages. Also, the corps committed to giving equal weight to environmental values, along with economic and technical factors, and selected those projects that were not merely economically justified but were the best solution to the problem at hand (Holmes 1979, 117).

BOUNDARIES, DECISION MAKING, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

The political choices that people confront in governing watersheds include deciding how to structure the governing institutions and organizations, who will participate in making decisions, how decisions will be made, and how decision makers will be held accountable. Several watershed writers accept politics as a given but express a weariness with existing political choices and a hope or desire for a different type of politics—a politics that is more reflective, collaborative, and cooperative; a politics that unfolds outside of present governments and dominant political institutions. Even savvy and experienced scholars such as Gregg and colleagues (1998, 26) convey such a sentiment in their discussion of collaborative watershed efforts: “One of the strengths of watershed initiatives is their ability to focus their activities directly at the most pressing natural resource problems of particular watersheds, often operating outside of normal governmental processes and free from the constraints of inflexible mandates or program requirements” (emphasis added).

Of course, Gregg and colleagues may merely be pointing out that political decision making can be improved when governance structures better match the watershed setting. (On this point, see also E. Ostrom 1992.) That is certainly a laudable aim, and we do not suggest for a moment that all institutional arrangements are equally good or bad. Political settings and choices may be more or less conflictual, more or less rigid, more or less open and accountable; what they cannot be is nonpolitical. And politics matters a great deal. In the end, policy alternatives are understood—and to a great degree either embraced and implemented or undermined and abandoned—in relation to whom they include or exclude, or whom they affect and how; how decisions are made and by whom; and how decision makers may be held accountable for their decisions. They are understood and accepted or rejected, in other words, on the basis of political considerations. As Scharpf (1997) notes, and as has been amply demonstrated in the watershed literature, policies believed to be optimal, in that they maximize a specific value or two, such as wetland protection or nutrient reduction, are rarely adopted as designed (see also Nakamura and Born 1993, 808). Usually they are modified because of political reasons, and (despite the somewhat politics-weary tone found in much of the watershed literature) that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Our goal is therefore to place some of the political choices that are embedded within watershed management in plain view and discuss them, in the hope that a clearer understanding of the political nature of the watershed will be useful for resource managers and their fellow citizens in recognizing those choices and their implications. In this chapter we focus directly on three sets of political issues—boundaries, decision-making arrangements, and accountability—all of which are unavoidable, even in collaborative efforts to manage watersheds sustainably and scientifically. We hope that the discussion illuminates not only the issues themselves but the necessity and value of being more explicit about them.

The chapter closes with a case study of the Platte River Basin. After more than a decade of conflict over endangered species issues, the governors of the three basin states and the Department of the Interior adopted the Platte River Cooperative Agreement. The agreement commits Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming to providing additional water to the river to protect and enhance critical habitat and to mitigate the effects of new water uses on river flows. In developing the agreement and devising a governing structure to implement it, the participants had to make explicit choices about who participates, how decisions are made, and how participants are to be held accountable. The Platte River case therefore provides an illustration of these fundamental political choices at work.

BOUNDARIES: WHO SHOULD MATTER IN WATERSHED DECISION-MAKING ARRANGEMENTS

The hope for a best way of governing watersheds can sound at times like a hope for watershed management without politics—more scientific, rational, and comprehensive, less bogged down by special interests and intergovernmental rivalries. This can be heard to some degree in the language about organizing management around watershed boundaries, because they are “natural” and “real,” unlike “political boundaries” that create undesirable “jurisdictional externalities.” Other scholars have pointed out, however, that the physical setting is less determinative and perhaps even less a “given” than thought. As Griffin (1999, 509) observed, “One problem with using watersheds as the geographic unit for management is that watersheds may not always be well defined. Omernik and Bailey (1997) report that approximately one third of the coterminous United States may possess physical characteristics that make watershed delineation problematic.”

Besides, Brunson (1998, 65) noted: “All boundaries are social constructs, marking human-perceived differences in the nature and identity of places. ... Even ecosystem boundaries are social constructs in that they reflect the spatial extent of natural conditions that characterize a human-defined categorization within the continuous range of actual and potential conditions.” In the watershed context, Woolley and McGinnis are more direct still:

Each watershed organization faces a boundary identification problem. Watershed organizations cannot depend merely on scientific information in the planning process. Each group struggles with a basic political issue—defining boundaries and planning issues. The benefits of the watershed focus—broadly about connections and interdependencies over a relevant geographic area—do not include the elimination of conflict and contention. Watershed planning, therefore, is always a scientific and a political activity. (1999, 591, emphasis in original)

Furthermore, a new batch of boundary questions emerges once one decides to try to organize management at the watershed scale. What is the appropriate watershed scale at which to govern? Should decision-making bodies be organized around small-scale watersheds that feed into larger watersheds that in turn feed into even larger watersheds? Or should a set of governance boundaries be drawn around a large-scale watershed? What about watersheds that have been tied together through human intervention, as is so common in the western United States with its history of inter-basin water transfer projects? Should these artificially linked water resources be governed as a single watershed (and if so, what happened to our notion of watersheds as “natural” boundaries?) or as separate ones despite the canals, pipelines, and pumping stations that connect them? All of these are political questions, ones that the physical setting alone cannot answer. As experienced water resources managers know, topographical maps cannot give us all the answers. Moreover, until decisions are made concerning who is in and who is out of the watershed, and thus who may have access to decision making about its resources and their use, science cannot answer how much water can be used, how much timber can be harvested, and how much land can be developed and in what manner.

Political scientist Deborah Stone (1988) notes that who gets what is as important as how they get it, but defining “who” and “how” is not a straightforward process. Each may be defined in a multitude of ways, and each definition is likely associated with a different notion of equity or fairness. Who, and whose interests, should be represented in watershed decision making has long been debated in the literature. Defining “who” involves distinguishing some people from others. People will predictably and understandably contest the distinctions made, either fighting to get in and be counted or seeking ways to escape and avoid what they perceive as the burden of belonging.

At one end of the spectrum in the debate over who should be included in decision making are Bates and colleagues (1993), who provide some of the strongest statements for the viewpoint that everyone affected by or affecting a water resource should be included in decision-making processes, whether located within the watershed or not. They refer to “the whole community” for any given water resource and define it in the following ways:

Western watersheds all implicate more diverse communities than ever before. Today’s community of interest is likely to include—in place of the old miner-farmer-rancher-industrial coalition that made western water policy—citizens determined to reduce government expenditures; Indian tribes; residents opposed to continued rapid growth in their geographic communities; environmentalists; citizens who want western rivers, lakes and aquifers managed to guarantee sustainability for their children and grandchildren; recreationists of all stripes; businesspeople whose livelihoods depend on the West’s emerging recreation economy; and those who simply believe, fervently, that western rivers should be allowed to retain the incomparable, eternal qualities that provide so much inspiration, reflection, and fulfillment. All of these and other identifiable interests need to be represented in modern water policy, and in most watersheds nearly all of them are clamoring for recognition. They will be heard, one way or another. (Bates et al. 1993, 9)

The essential importance of water places a special value on the manner in which decisions are made respecting its use and availability. The whole community must be considered in those decisions, and all interests must have a meaningful opportunity to participate. (Bates et al. 1993, 182)

For Bates and colleagues (1993, 197), fairness requires that all who are touched by the effects of water use, no matter how separated by time and distance, be involved in a meaningful way in decisions that affect it. All should be allowed to participate and to have their interests represented. Given the importance of water, they conclude, an expansive notion of “who” must be adopted. Their viewpoint is echoed in statements by countless others arguing that watershed management should encompass “all affected interests.” At the other end of the spectrum, Ingram and colleagues (1984) take a less sanguine view of broad-based participation in watershed decision making. Regional decision making at a watershed or river basin scale always bears the risk of overlooking or undervaluing local impacts. Ingram and colleagues (1984) argue that the people who are most affected by watershed uses, which are most often geographic communities situated within the watershed, must be given the greatest weight in decision making. They caution: “It is important to look at consequences from a particularized or localized perspective as well as basin wide. Despite the fact that physical scientists describe river basins as general, interconnected systems, the experience of impacts is often discrete and localized” (1984, 326). Thus, “the appropriate geographic boundaries within which to identify interests in institutional assessments should be drawn from an understanding of the stakes rather than river basin boundaries, subject matter, or other artificially imposed limits” (ibid.).

Furthermore, in those discrete and localized settings that often exist at the sub-watershed scale, decisions about water resources are also decisions about the nature, strength, and future of communities. “Water still symbolizes such values as opportunity, security and self-determination. . . . Control over it signals social organization and political power. . . . Strong communities are able to hold on to their water and put it to work. Communities that lose control over water probably will fail in trying to control much else of importance” (Ingram 1990, 5). Weber (2003) broadens the discussion to include economic considerations. Members of place-based communities often rely heavily on natural resources for their livelihoods. Severely restrict logging in national forests, or substantially reduce irrigation water from federal water projects, and local economies buckle. Thus, for economic as well as political and cultural reasons, local communities situated within watersheds need to be represented in watershed decision-making processes.

Thus far, nothing has been stated that would raise serious disagreement, even though the statements quoted above come to the issue of inclusion from differing perspectives. One could finesse the choice rhetorically: broad inclusion of “all affected interests” sounds good, as does the representation and protection of local communities where the impacts of watershed management actions are felt most strongly. There is a deeper puzzle, however, that is harder to elide once it is articulated more starkly. If we say that “all affected interests” should be included, for instance, what do we mean by someone or some group having an “interest” in the watershed? Does “having an interest” mean living in the watershed? Using resources from the watershed? Visiting the watershed regularly, or even occasionally? Hoping to visit the watershed someday? Caring about the watershed even though one never expects to live or visit there?

To put it even more bluntly, can one “have an interest” in a watershed by just “taking an interest” in the watershed? Can I put myself “into” a watershed by an act of choice or an exercise of will because I want to be included? And would this be a unilateral act on my part, or do others who claim to be connected with that watershed have some say in whether I am “in” or “out”? When we define boundaries, we are saying (whether we acknowledge it explicitly or not) who is in and who is out, who “counts” and how much and who doesn’t count at all. In more mundane political terms, who has a vote, a veto, or both, or neither?

With these questions in mind, let us go back to the points raised by Ingram and colleagues on the one hand and Bates and colleagues on the other. Ingram’s argument that local communities should be protected in decisionmaking processes raises some important concerns over the involvement of non-local communities of interest recommended by Bates and colleagues (1993). The potential loss of control and the fate of one’s local community, if watershed-scale decision making is opened up to non-local communities, are serious issues with no easy resolution. Even though Bates and colleagues (1993, 195) advocate opening watershed decision making to all who are affected by or interested in the watershed, they also make the case (perhaps unintentionally) against involving non-local communities of interest:

The trade-offs inherent in water decisions can be calculated in broad equivalents: a car wash in Los Angeles consumes the water of a family farm in Owens Valley; a farm in La Paz County is worth two golf courses in Tucson; a subdivision in the Denver suburbs with Kentucky bluegrass lawns uses the amount of water needed to keep a pristine western Colorado mountain stream full of fish; turning down the airconditioning temperature by two degrees in Phoenix requires releases of water from hydroelectric dams that destroy a season’s boating in the Grand Canyon. What does all this mean to the L.A. car wash customer, the Denver lawn waterer, the cattle rancher, the golfer, or the Phoenix resident? It’s tough to appreciate the difference one more clean car, green lawn, golf course or cool Phoenician will make. (Bates et al., 1993, 195)