Helen Ingram and colleagues on a few necessary conditions for a good solution to water management issues:

Good policy design contributes to three key public needs: progress in problem solving that will make tomorrow’s challenges easier than today’s; representation of sufficient interests, so that the policy has a positive balance of support and is politically feasible; and empowerment of the people affected, so that they can become engaged and better able to resolve their own problems.

That’s from Divided Waters, the excellent 1995 book by Ingram, Nancy Laney, David Gillilan about the specific water management problems of the twin cities of Nogales in Arizona and Sonora, and about transboundary water management challenges more generally.