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Western States Water Council Legal Committee Sioux Falls, South Dakota May 3, 2007 . really revolves around three areas: I) comprehensive systems approach to things we do internally and externally; 2) communication - we need to communicate better across boundaries, etc. and just lay it all out; and 3) reliability and professionalism that we need to continue to convey. Finally, you all know that we came up with a Shared Vision Partnership Agreementthat really looked at how we are going to do this. We looked at two initiatives as a part of that and that's the multi-agency federal liaison person that would kind of be the lead person for the team. We wanted a federal support team made up of representatives from all the state agencies, federal, state and local, to really form a nucleus for the efforts that are ahead throughout the western states. We see those as critical stepping stones to further the success of not just this watershed study, but as spin offs ofthat study. Gene will tell you about the six potential future projects, or studies that need to be further enhanced. It's important that everyone hears where we are going collectively regarding the things that need to be addressed. Gene Lilly: States playa pivotal role in water resources planning. The Corps is just part of the overall process in completing the tasks for the water report. As Mike stated, we're in the process of putting together project delivery teams. We've also started to put together points of contacts for each one of these tasks. * basic water data collection * drought * climate change * natural hazards * watershed tools and collaborative planning * federal infrastructure needs * programs and polices . This is just a framework schedule, but the Corps is hoping to have a draft done by October and then finalized in November 2007. Duane Smith gave his description of how he sees this whole thing laying out by using the water supply matrix that Tony handed out during the Water Resources Committee meeting and slide #7 from Gene Lilly's presentation. He described the process and the program. Mike Fallon addressed his perspective on the holistic watershed approach - looking at regions or across states, and not looking at political boundaries. EFFORTS TO ENGAGE THE ADMINISTRATION RELATIVE TO THE ESA PROTOCOL Craig Bell stated that Julie McDonald, the only person within the federal implementing agencies who appeared to be willing to cooperate with the Council in working on the ESA protocol, just left her position at the Interior Department. Jim Lecky, who actually helped draft the protocol, has not been able to return our calls. Thus, despite our efforts, we haven't gotten much cooperation from the Administration, but we will continue to try. . 6