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uncertain world and tough holding to expectations that would induce good faith efforts to push <br />ahead. The FWS mantra was lets talk, make milestone commitments, evaluate, discuss options, <br />and adjust milestones as compelling lessons were learned. FWS personnel pointed to examples of <br />agency reasonableness in other collaborative efforts-e.g., on the Upper Colorado where <br />milestones had been adjusted and new ones created in an effort to deal flexibly with previously <br />unanticipated problems (Morgenwick 2001). Adaptive management and fulfillment of <br />milestones became two concepts closely allied as negotiations progressed. <br />Eventually the FWS promoted constructive discussion by calling for and collaboratively <br />arranging workshops every few months. Small groups representing the several interests met to <br />define problems, do homework and envision solutions, and then feed proposals into the <br />workshops. A basic dynamic was repeated across the years: <br />l. members within each network (each of the three states, the Federal interests, and <br />environmental communities) would consult, sort out issues amongst themselves. <br />Within networks, home coalitions had to be constructed; <br />2. states, after building a coalition and strategy, could then talk with the other states, <br />and environmental groups could share with other environmental groups; <br />3. only then could each network work with other parties at the committee level. As <br />issues and positions emerged, members of each network would retreat to <br />reconfigure their positions as new information and opportunities would arise. <br />Virtually all participants were busy with other regular responsibilities in their <br />organizations, and the work of building networks and developing and modifying <br />positions would require extended time and commitment. <br />Because negotiations were, and are, constructed out of these many conversations within <br />and among the sub-networks, leaders could not simply sign documents and expect successful <br />outcomes. Collaborative efforts, by their very nature, are slow because leaders must build <br />coalitions in order to retain support of players who are there voluntarily. Rushing the process too <br />fast risked neglecting the creation of strong actionable coalitions. Slacking off too much simply <br />invited delay. The solution was to meet monthly and push as hard as possible, backing off in the <br />face of protest of hard pressed people. <br />Target Flow Challenge <br />Between 1994 and 1997, the biggest single substantive challenge for negotiators was <br />finding a way to deal with the FWS judgment, in its biological opinion, that the history of water <br />diversions in the Platte river basin had shorted the critical habitat of an annual average of 417,000 <br />acre feet of water flow. Negotiations threatened to flounder on the question as to whether that <br />estimate was justifiable. For its part, the FWS could not play fast and loose with its biological <br />opinion that was at the basis of the entire basin discussion, and water users were not about to <br />accept such a number or the analysis that had generated it. <br />The FWS, insisted that much water be re-regulated on behalf of the ESA agenda, and <br />water users insisted on obtaining regulatory certainty without promising anything close the FWS <br />target flow. The question was how to cut through the impasse over target flows to clear a path <br />58