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Trajectories in Australian Water Policy47Wildlife Service. Moreover, while pollution lawand the protection of biodiversity reside largelyin Federal hands, water quantity, by contrast, isa matter of state law – and land use managementis generally the domain of local government. AsAndreen (2006) warns, successive United Stateslegislators:have spent decades creating… separate legalsystems to govern land use, water use and waterpollution, and it will take considerable effort todemonstrate to voters, economic interests, anddecision-makers at all levels of governmentprecisely how land use and water are inextricablyconnected throughout the whole of a watershed.Such jurisdictional fragmentation leads toa second significant problem of regulatoryfragmentation between water rights and landrights. In the United States, there is a considerableproblem with coordination both vertically withrespect to Federal law, state water law, and localland use management, and horizontally withrespect to the various agencies and political entitiesthat have responsibilities within each subject area.As in Australia, there have been attempts in theUnited States to overcome these jurisdictionalbarriers, including the public trust doctrine and theintroduction of environmental impact assessments.However, unlike in Australia and the EuropeanUnion—where environmental impact assessmentshave been incorporated into all state and memberstate legislation—in the United States it has onlybeen enacted into 15 state statutes (Andreen 2006),in addition to the Federal statute. In an effortto overcome this “multi-layered jurisdictionalpuzzle” there have been calls for the developmentof watershed institutions, much like the catchmentbasedinstitutions in the National Water Initiativeand Water Framework Directive. However, to datethere has not been a comprehensive Federal pushfor this kind of regime change.There are, however, aspects of United Stateswater policy that are very similar to those of Australiaand the European Union. The use of financialincentives or economic instruments is extensive inthe United States, and they are captured in Federaland state agri-enviromental schemes such as theconservation programs in the United States FarmBill, and vary in substance across the states. Watertrading has been implemented in some states suchas California where water is scarce but there are nosuggestions that this would become national in extent.Indeed the extensive jurisdictional fragmentationacross levels of government would makethat particularly difficult. In the main, however,the United States policy style in the water domaincould be characterized on the one hand as administrativerationalism par excellence, and on the otherhand as economic rationalism owing to the choiceof policy instruments, if not in terms of the role ofgovernment.In relation to water quality, there is nationallegislation in the form of the Clean Water Act,although it is focused primarily on point-sourcepollution from industry and manufacturing. Fornon-point source pollution, such as that created byagriculture, the United States Congress instructedstates to develop water management plans but thepolicy was “watered down” such that it permittedthe states to use exclusively non-regulatoryavenues such as technical assistance, education,training, and demonstration projects to implementthe management plans (Andreen 2006). In UnitedStates agri-environment policy, dual emphasisis placed on both economic incentives, andparticipatory approaches to problem-solving.ConclusionThis paper has established that the apparent“framework” represented by Australia’s NationalWater Initiative—and by European Union andUnited States equivalents—contains unresolvedtensions:the demand for a national, property-rights-basedwater management system and recognition of theneed to hold Australia’s freshwater systems to“environmentally sustainable levels of extraction”have resulted in a framework that is weakened byunresolved tensions between the two (Connell etal. 2005).This should not surprise, as framework policies,especially in federal systems and in complexpolicy domains such as water, by definition are theproduct of political compromise, accommodatingthe aspirations of multiple players. The danger liesin forgetting that unresolved differences and discoursesremain to be negotiated during implementation ofthe policy, and in the construction and maintenanceof water management arrangements consistent withJOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY WATER RESEARCH & EDUCATIONUCOWR