In the last 10 years, environmental allocations for in-stream flows, habitat and recreation have intruded into the water developer’s realm, complicating economic valuation and the breadth and depth of public involvement. Crudely put, there are now more users, each requiring more of a limited resource. This has created a complexity to which few traditional water managers, engineers, have been sensitised, or trained to understand. The process of institutional development in developed country water management has occurred over the last 30 to 50 years as various elements of this complexity have revealed themselves and in turn brought the realisation that further change and complexity lies ahead which cannot be managed exclusively by well-informed individuals and well-trained technocratic elites.