Environmentally sensitive river management and river restoration require multi-objective project designs. Unfortunately, "multipurpose" river projects are susceptible to institutional barriers and technical shortcomings that lead to abandonment of some project goals. To understand the root causes of some technical shortcomings in multipurpose river plans I employ a "one tool per goal" criteria from economic theory after checking its applicability to river systems on a qualitative basis. When the "one tool per goal" criteria is coupled with systematic design principles, a "Tools and Goals" (TAG) method that identifies conflicting facets of a project design and qualitatively predicts the outcome of a project can be devised.
I applied the TAG method to the Guadalupe River Master Plan (GRMP) for downtown San Jose. The evaluation procedure identified the basis for the success of some facets of the plan and indicated future problems that need to be addressed. The GRMP includes 13 design objectives and 35 unique tools. The evaluation procedure therefore required 1128 micro-analyses in order to identify the conflicts that will lead to institutional barriers. Thirty-three such conflicts do exist in this case. Also, the "one tool per goal" criteria is violated twice in this project, though only with low priority goals. As a result, the TAG analysis predicts that those goals will be dropped over the long term.
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