Forest management by West Coast water utilities: Influences and consequences (California, Oregon, Washington)

This dissertation analyzes forest management policies and outcomes of public water utilities on the west coast of California, Oregon, and Washington. I limited the study to the 45 public water utilities in the Coast Ranges that own land in forested watersheds providing local surface water to communities. My research assesses the variation in policies and outcomes, in terms of their protectiveness towards water quality, and examines the political, social and economic factors that influence this variation. Policies of interest addressed silvicultural methods, rotation age, riparian protection, forest road construction, and water quality monitoring. Measured outcomes included average annual percent of acreage logged, acres of forest reserve, predominant stand age, and road density in miles per square mile of land. I used a model of environmental policy capacity, formulated by Daniel Press, to analyze the enabling factors of communities that lead to positive environmental outcomes.; The first phase of the research assessed the entire population of water utilities quantitatively. Chi-square analysis of discrete data, which I obtained from a mail census, revealed that water utilities most likely to log had three traits: They functioned as part of city governments, they prohibited public access to the watershed, and they had neighboring commercial timberland.; I also used continuous data obtained from state records to assess the entire population quantitatively. To measure policy capacity, the independent variable, I used three indicators: voter support of state environmental ballot measures, average water utility per capita expenditures, and percent of watershed owned. To assess the dependent variable, I used the average annual percent of owned acres logged during the period 1986--2001. I found no correlations between any of the independent variable indicators and the dependent variable, which I attributed to inadequacy of state logging data that was available prior to 1986. The effect was that the actual extent of logging was under-represented.; The second phase of the research involved six in-depth case studies. I selected a pair of cases from each state that were most similar in terms of policy capacity, while different in terms of logging intensity. I used ordinal cross-case analysis to compare and rank case studies on several indicators of policy capacity, forest management policies and practices, and on-the-ground outcomes. Further case study analysis both confirmed and explained how visibility of the watershed, and type of governance played a key role in shaping policies and environmental outcomes.; Policy recommendations included the fostering of public participation in watershed management decisions, and additional federal and state funding for watershed restoration.