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issues on his campaign agenda in Colorado, but ailer working on the problems caused by the <br />permitting logjam on the Poudre river reservoirs, and following the Colorado Division 1 Court <br />case, he could see the impossibility of the emergirig situation. He then chose to be open to <br />environmental arguments. Furthermore, he wished the Clinton administration well in its efforts to <br />reform policy and practice in the Department of Interior. <br />Early in the Clinton administration, therefore, Governor Romer conducted direct <br />conversations with then Secretary Babbit. The Governor invited Babbit to come and speak in <br />Colorado and make a proposal for a comprehensive collaborative Platte River basin-wide <br />negotiated approach to the problem. These discourses soon led to a series of ineetings involving <br />senior office-holders and water users in all three basin states in 1993 and early 1994. The talks <br />had been held in the bitter aftermat:h of the collapse of Two-Forks in Colorado, the grindingly <br />slow progress in the FERC discussions at Kingsley Dam, the scary possibilities that were being <br />contemplated on Poudre upstream reservoirs and Wyoming's stymied efforts to capture water for <br />its own purposes-most especially Casper. On June 10, 1994, an early draft agreement to talk <br />systematically was signed by the Department of tlle Interior and the Governors of Wyoming, <br />Nebraska and Colorado. Signatures were put to paper just one week after the FWS issued its <br />biological opinion finding jeopardy for species in the operation of Arapaho/Roosevelt/Poudre <br />river facilities. This first three-states-DOI agreetnent was only five pages long including the <br />signature sheet, and lacked much substance. But it made a critical point. Basin-wide collaborative <br />negotiations would be undertaken with a goal of re-regulating basin flows and of improving <br />critical habitat-somehow. Governors of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado-and the Secretary of <br />Interior-had made a commitment to building a Platte River Endangered Species Partnership that <br />had two major objectives: <br />1. to develop and impYement a habitat recovery program for four threatened and <br />endangered species in Nebraska: whooping crane, piping plover, least tern, and <br />pallid sturgeon; <br />2. to enable water users in the Platte basin to proceed with existing and new activities <br />(as of June 30,1997) the anticipated date of a viable cooperative agreement without <br />additional actions being required for the four species. It allowed CNPPID/NPPD to <br />comply with the requirements of the FERC interim re-licensing agreement, by, for <br />example, following the rules for a newly established environmental account at <br />Lake McConaughy. <br />All parties agreed to work within existing frameworks of federal and state law. If the effort <br />to construct a viable reasonable an.d prudent alteinative were to fail, it was agreed that all <br />biological opinions would be reopened. Negotiations would now proceed. <br />49