The appropriate use of water quality models is important because predictions generated by the models are being used to justify federal and state approval of massive projects, implying that we truly know what the future water quality impacts will be.

In this chapter, I argue that the cause of overly optimistic scenarios lies not in the science, but rather in the economic and political pressures placed on technical consultants and the government managers, which lead them to use inadequate models and to misuse their predictive results.

The models give the public a false sense of certainty. There was no discussion on the uncertainty in these predictions. “This is truth.” But indeed they were oversimplified models with false assumptions.