One of the most perplexing problems in the United States is concerned with providing the public services required in rapidly-expanding urban areas. This problem involves the development, use, and management of water resources. In order to allocate the available physical and economic resources, water resource planners have concentrated on developing planning techniques to meet these allocation problems. Significant gains have been made by the application of systems analysis and operations research, but little attention has been directed in the past towards the development of procedures for the formulation of objectives in water resource planning. This research is concerned with the study of urban water planning objectives in the San Antonio, Texas area. Specific goals were set and researched. Then, the procedure was applied to a realistic problem encountered by the San Antonio, Texas metropolitan area. The study indicates how other such procedures can be generated, depending on the planning environment and the problems at hand.