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? <br />? <br />? <br />? <br />- In principle, the barrage of jeopardy opinions could have caused major disruptions of <br />- water supplies for agriculture, cities, and power production. However, the relevant federal action <br />agencies (following the lead provided by the FWS's jeopardy opinions) granted temporary <br />? approval for continued operation of permitted facilities on the condition that serious negotiations <br />• would be undertaken by Platte basin interests and that, during the negotiation period, specific <br />- actions involving land, water, and money would be undertaken to mitigate jeopardy. The purpose <br />would be to create a basin-wide solution. There was clear understanding that if negotiations were <br />? to fail, ESA section 7 consultations would be reopened. Water users in the Platte River Basin <br />? were thereby provided an opportunity to voluntarily come into compliance with ESA, but there <br />- were fearsome consequences for no action. <br />Failure to accomplish a satisfactory collective solution on a basin wide basis would mean <br />individual consultations during which the Fish and Wildlife Service would evaluate each <br />individual project against what the agency judged to be a basin-wide target flow shortage of <br />417,000 acre-feet per year at Grand Island, Nebraska. Even though users never agreed to the <br />shortage numbers presented by the Fish and Wildlife Services, they were bound to them. If <br />individual water users failed to build their own collective reasonable and prudent alternative in an <br />acceptable manner, the Fish and Wildlife Service would devise its own solution on an individual <br />case-by-case basis as federal permit renewals came up. It would do so within a frame centered on <br />what was to water users a shockingly high FWS water shortage calculation-an annual average of <br />417,000 acre feet -and a FWS determination that there needed to be 29,000 acres of high quality <br />listed species land habitat on and around the central Platte. <br />? The Platte basin permitting crisis would lead directly to the governors of three states and <br />• the Secretary of the Department of Interior signing a memorandum of agreement in June, 1994 <br />- that pledged a good faith effort to construct a cooperative program to restore and protect critical <br />habitat in Nebraska for the whooping crane and other listed species. If this cooperative effort <br />? were to fall through, then the FWS would then return to individual ESA section 7 consultations <br />? that would not have the advantages potentially available under a basin-wide collaborative <br />• program. Such a threat constituted strong incentive for basin water users to collectively seek <br />- relief from the jeopardy opinions to which they were subject. To once again gain a modicum of <br />control over their operating environment to obtain "regulatory certainty"--water users would have <br />? little option but to join in a collaboration with each other, environmentalists, and the Department <br />? of Interior to create a basin-wide solution. <br />19