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PaRT III STRATEGIC OP9C10NS-LITIGATION, INDIVIDUAL PROJECT PERMITTING, <br />COOPERATIVE PROGRAM <br />"When you marry the U.S. Treasw.y, you get the federal government i:or a mother-in-law." <br />Northcutt "Mike" Ely <br />Department of the Interior, Hoover <br />Administration <br />By the 1970's, in context of the environmental movement and questionable water <br />proposals at Grand Canyon and the Narrows project on the Eastern Colorado plains, new <br />environmental legislation would cataiyze a rethinking of water management from a basin-wide <br />perspective-more along the lines that had been envisaged by John Wesley Powell, John Muir, <br />Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson., All this new thinking about inserting environmental agendas <br />into traditional water management created a series of train wrecks across the West and most <br />particularly in the Missouri and Platte River Basins: <br />l. Greyrocks Dam anci Reservoir in Wyoming was challenged by environmentalists <br />and the state of Nebraska employing the ESA, but was ultimately approved; <br />2. the Narrows project in Eastern Colorado was also challenged under terms of the <br />ESA, but unlike Gr-eyrocks, it failed for many reasons among them obstacles <br />rooted in environmental considerations; <br />3. Denver Water's T`NO Forks Dam and Reservoir project on the South Platte failed <br />to win an essential permit required under the Clean Water Act but endangered <br />species considerations were also significant; <br />4. the Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service also employed the ESA to attempt <br />to re-regulate uses of mountain reservoirs on the Poudre River west of Fort <br />Collins, Colorado by refusing to renew federal Forest Service permits for facilities <br />constructed by a mutual company and two cities on federal forest land. <br />All of this (and more), taken together with the intense discussion that had developed <br />around re-licensing of operations at Kingsley Dam and Lake McConaughy, slowly ground out <br />terms and conditions for an eventual 1994 agreement to seek a collaborative basin-wide solution <br />that could provide for essential needs of listed species in central Nebraska and provide regulatory <br />certainty for water users. <br />29