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are other motives at play here. Control of water and land resources by the Service, with <br />the Fish and Wildlife Service deciding what is best for all of us, appears to be the motive. <br />Currently the means of forestalling this federal infringement on the property <br />rights of Nebraskans is the Cooperative Agreement. This process was born out of the <br />settlement of the licenses in the previously mentioned FERC projects. <br />In theory, this process looks good - and in theory it is. Instead of all the burden <br />being placed on a few individuals, it will be spread among three states. Instead of all the <br />costs coming from individual projects it is shared with the states and the federal <br />government. Instead of one endless consultation after another on hundreds of projects, <br />we will have one consultation to cover all of them. Instead of blindly releasing water and <br />protecting undefined habitat at the design of a few zealot fish and wildlife employees in <br />Grand Island, we will have a program based upon an incremental approach using <br />adaptive management to carefully evaluate our activities before we make irretrievable <br />errors. <br />But that was the theory. Over the years, NWU has grown concerned about some <br />of the promises made. The very word "cooperative" has become suspect as time and <br />again a part of the deal would be brokered by the governing committee of the <br />Cooperative Agreement, only to be undone by low level Fish and Wildlife persons — <br />proclaiming that they are the final arbiter of the truth. "Cooperative" to the Service <br />apparently means "my way ". <br />A recent development that has raised the eyebrows of more than a few folks <br />around Nebraska, was the introduction of a new "mitigation" that was added to what we <br />thought was the original deal. This was the issue of adding sediment to the river. What <br />2 <br />