Recent book on local water policies and sustainability

Issues of potable water increasingly present major challenges to cities all around the country and the world.  A recent book, entitled Governing the Tap, by Megan Mullin, a political scientist at Temple University, is worth looking at. Directly comparing specific conservation, land use, and contracting policies enacted by different forms of local government, Mullin investigates the capacity of special districts to engage in responsive and collaborative decision making that promotes sustainable use of water resources. She concludes that the effect of specialization is conditional on the structure of institutions and the severity of the policy problem, with specialization offering the most benefit on policy problems that are least severe.  Taking a closer and more critical look at local, especially city, water policies is long overdue.  Hopefully, this book will usher in a period where we stop taking water policies for granted, and re-examine the use of special water districts to see how effectively they contribute to the overall sustainability of our cities and metropolitan areas.  I'm not making any judgments about this issue, but Mullin's book certainly raises a lot of important questions.  Since I expect that water issues will become the next wave of serious environmental problems to be confronted world-wide, such analysis is badly needed.