Reining in drought : how water limits influence conservation in Massachusetts towns

It's surprising to learn that the water-rich state of Massachusetts experiences incidences of water stress, where rivers go dry for stretches of the year and where municipalities struggle to meet water demand. Water conservation and demand management is one important part of reducing pressures on water supplies and alleviating ecosystem stress. Although the state has recently revisited water management policies and has promoted revised measures to increase conservation, the actual measures taken are implemented on the scale of the municipality. This thesis examines three affluent suburban municipalities located in stressed river basins in eastern Massachusetts that have taken different degrees of conservation and demand management efforts. The stories reveal that the decisions to curb water demand have been influenced by the degree to which towns have experienced a perceptible limit to their supply. These towns also show us how a crisis, or an event of water shortage, can bring focus to the limits of water, providing an opportunity for town managers to redefine the problem in such a way that conservation is the solution.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Brown, Anna L. (Anna Libby)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Judith A. Layzer.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37460

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37460