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35 III. Status of Cooperative Agreement Activities . A brief summary of the status of important individual committee activities is provided below: · The Water Action Plan Committee and Water Management Committee did not meet. · The Land Committee did not meet. . The Technical Committee met and began work on a general monitoring protocol and a protocol for monitoring Whooping Crane use of the study area. The general monitoring program is designed to describe/evaluate the physical characteristics of the environment (i.e., land use cover, river channel processes) at three levels: 1) Svstem wide- focusing on the entire study area; 2) PrOt>ram wide - focusing on land owned or managed by the Program; and 3) Management Soecitlc - focusing on evaluating specific land management actions undertaken by the Program. The three states decided to ini tiate an independent evaluation of the channel morphology issues .(sedir,nent) raised by the EIS team and Fish and Wildlife Service. We are in the process of hiring a technical contractor to look at the data and analysis completed by the feds. Generally, the goals ofthis effort are to: detennine if all available information has been included and access the quality of this information; evaluate the methods of analysis and detennine if they are technically accurate and/or if other defensible conclusions could be drawn; determine if alternative analysis are warranted and if so complete these analysis. The states study is expected to be completed by August 15, 200l . IV. Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Analysis No specific activities were reported from the EISteam. V. Budget The budget did not receive significant attention since the last Board memorandum. We are anticipating an increase in the projected budget (Original CA budget was $75 million in 1997 dollars). However, additional work is required to identify a realistic and acceptable budget level. .. . 2