Public involvement in multi-objective water level regulation development projects—evaluating the applicability of public involvement methods

Public involvement is a process that involves the public in the decision making of an organization, for example a municipality or a corporation. It has developed into a widely accepted and recommended policy in environment altering projects. The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) took force in 2000 and stresses the importance of public involvement in composing river basin management plans. Therefore, the need to develop public involvement methods for different situations and circumstances is evident. This paper describes how various public involvement methods have been applied in a development project involving the most heavily regulated lake in Finland. The objective of the project was to assess the positive and negative impacts of regulation and to find possibilities for alleviating the adverse impacts on recreational use and the aquatic ecosystem. An exceptional effort was made towards public involvement, which was closely connected to planning and decision making. The applied methods were (1) steering group work, (2) survey, (3) dialogue, (4) theme interviews, (5) public meeting and (6) workshops. The information gathered using these methods was utilized in different stages of the project, e.g., in identifying the regulation impacts, comparing alternatives and compiling the recommendations for regulation development. After describing our case and the results from the applied public involvement methods, we will discuss our experiences and the feedback from the public. We will also critically evaluate our own success in coping with public involvement challenges. In addition to that, we present general recommendations for dealing with these problematic issues based on our experiences, which provide new insights for applying various public involvement methods in multi-objective decision making projects.