Laserfiche WebLink
designation to further increase their power leverage on the Platte River. The Service <br />released an incomplete environmental analysis in the summer of 2001, promising <br />additional analysis early enough to give interested parties an opportunity to review and <br />comment on their draft work. With apparent disregard for the law or common sense or <br />courtesy, the Service released what they viewed as the last piece of the environmental <br />analysis, the economic report, on December 28, 2001, with notice of a 30 -day comment <br />period — even though I understand the law requires a 60 -day comment period. <br />I do not know about you, but during the day following December 28, I was not <br />monitoring the federal register. for Fish and Wildlife Service documents. When the notice <br />did come to my attention, NWU attempted to access the document as described in the <br />Federal Register, that is through the DOI's website. That had been shut down several <br />months earlier and remains shut down, to my knowledge, today. Thirty days quickly <br />became 14 and so on. If the Service's intention was to keep the public from receiving <br />and reviewing this document to provide meaningful comments, they were successful. <br />The review that NWU was able to do revealed an economic report so lacking in <br />substance and analysis as to be embarrassing. Other than costs related to a few extra <br />meetings that might be incurred by federal agencies, no costs were analyzed. No <br />reference to farm programs, no reference to sand and gravel mining, none to housing <br />development and so on. <br />The system that we now have related to administering the ESA is broken. I don't <br />believe that what we experience in central Nebraska is what Congress intended. I don't <br />believe that this is what administrations past or present intended and I am not even sure <br />that this is what is intended on a regional basis. <br />rel <br />