An environmental engineering journal will be presenting its 2013 Best Policy-Oriented Paper Award to Jay Lund, director of the Center, and one of his former students for their article comparing conflicts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the game of Chicken.

Lund and Kaveh Madani, now an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, used game theory to analyze political strategies among competing stakeholders in the Delta's agricultural, recreational, environmental and water resources.

Individual interests often benefit from refusing to compromise and shifting responsibility to others, even if it delays a solution, risks disaster and increases the overall costs of a solution, the authors said in the paper, published in the March/April 2012 Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management. Stronger state and federal leadership is needed to break up this game of chicken, they said.

The Environmental & Water Resources Institute is scheduled to present the award May 21 during the World Environmental & Water Resources Congress in Cincinnati.

California WaterBlog: Delta 'chicken' – a tragedy Journal article: California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta Conflict: From Cooperation to Chicken