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to provide a level of certainty for water users in the basin. Some of the projects involved <br />included: <br />The Federal dams on the North Platte River in Wyoming and the Colorado -Big <br />Thompson Project in northern Colorado; <br />Six municipal and industrial water projects along the Front Range of Colorado which, <br />pursuant to biological opinions by the Fish and Wildlife Service issued to the Forest <br />Service, were required to implement reasonable and prudent alternatives to offset <br />depletions to the Central Platte in Nebraska; <br />The hydropower facilities in Nebraska, including Kingsley Dam/Lake McConaughy, have <br />licenses issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission which are conditioned <br />upon the development of a recovery program. <br />The Cooperative Agreement <br />On July 1, 1997, after three and a half years of discussion and negotiation, the Cooperative <br />Agreement was signed by the Governors of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado, and the <br />Secretary of the Interior. The Cooperative Agreement established the basis for a basinwide <br />endangered species recovery program for the Platte River and is the mechanism through which a <br />recovery program is to be developed to allow existing, water - related Federal activities to proceed <br />in compliance with the ESA, but without the need for full consultation on each individual <br />project. <br />The Proposed Basinwide Recovery Program <br />The Cooperative Agreement sets forth a proposed adaptive management program to be <br />implemented on an incremental basis with the first increment lasting thirteen years. Many details <br />of the second increment will be worked out during the first increment based upon new data <br />collected as a result of research and monitoring conducted during the first increment. <br />The purposes of the recovery program include: <br />to secure defined benefits for the target species and their associated habitats to assist in <br />3 <br />