Evaluation of Four Completed Small Watershed Projects: South Carolina, Maryland, Idaho-Nevada, and West Virginia

This study was designed to determine the efficacy of the planning process and in four operating small watershed projects. A qualitative appraisal was made of actual performance and costs, which were then compared with work plan projections. Particular attention was paid to factors, as reported by project beneficiaries and leaders of local sponsoring organizations, that affected the size and composition of these realized values. The desired physical manipulation of the water resource—reducing flooding, improving drainage, and providing water for irrigation, municipal use, and recreation—was achieved in each project. However, this was not always equivalent to generating desired economic performance; for example, higher crop yields. Thus, realized values often differed in size and always in composition from projected values. Study results indicate that planners should strongly encourage local involvement in planning, evaluate social and economic variables that tend to delimit a project's operating environment, and use a multiobjective planning approach to minimize differences between work plan estimates and actual values. The projects evaluated reportedly had only a limited impact on the natural environment.