A
Secret War over the Platte River
Reported by Bill
Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent
The Platte River is Nebraska's major source of surface irrigation water. Responsibility
for about one third of the Platte's flow was given to the Game and Parks Commission
by the Legislature. In April, the Commission did an about face over how much
water wildlife and endangered species need to survive in the river. That flip-flop
concerned many Nebraskans. There have been accusations that by striking a compromise
with irrigators and power districts, the Commission may have compromised the
future of the river.
For an update on
the final decision of the Game and Parks Commission, click
here.
Environmentalists packed the house at an April Game and Parks Commission meeting,
one after another picking up their "Save the Platte" stickers.
[Activist:] "Yes, we have stickers."
[Activist:] "We personally are outraged that this meeting
should even have had to be held."
They spent much of the day telling the commissioners charged
with helping protect the state's natural resources that they felt as if Game
and Parks had ignored its most important mission.
[Activist:] "It is said that there must be give and take
from both sides in the compromise but in this agreement, it's all give and no
take."
That settlement was the work of three Game and Parks commissioners meeting behind
closed doors with irrigators and public power companies who worry they will
lose their say over how the waters of the Platte River can be used. [Bill Berryman, Game and Parks Commissioner:]
"We will ensure that there will be some flows in that river, that they
can't totally dry up the river, and that's what we're trying to do is make sure
that the river doesn't totally dry up. But we also have to serve all the people
and all the needs of this state and that's what we're trying to do and still
maintain the integrity of the river."
Game and Parks Commissioner Bill Berryman is tired of hearing
people claim that Game and Parks caved into interests who use the Platte River
water for agriculture in generating electricity.
[Berryman:] "I think we've protected the integrity of
the river. I think we've protected the integrity of the Game and Parks Commission." [John Cavanaugh, Platte River Maintenance Trustee:] "They
took the whole public record that they've accumulated over the previous five
years and gutted it in two months of private sessions with people who didn't
participate in public and I just -- I can't understand that."
John Cavanaugh, Trustee on the Environmentally-minded Whooping
Crane Trust says the latest carping about Game and Parks' role in the survival
of the Platte takes the debate to the most fundamental level.
[Cavanaugh:] "It comes down to what is the future of
the Platte River? What do we do with the remaining flows? And that question
is whether or not the Platte River in central Nebraska remains a viable, living
resource."
Both sides agree that it's that basic and that complicated.
Seventy percent of the legal rights to the Platte River water have been handed
out over the years to irrigators for watering crops and to public power companies
to generate electricity. Ten years ago the Nebraska Legislature gave the rights
and responsibility for the remainder of the river water to the Game and Parks
Commission. The hope was to assure that water needed for the world famous migrating
cranes and endangered terns and plovers as well as less exotic fish and birds
would always be there. The result was a document adopted by the Commission in
1993. It spells out how flows in the river would be managed to protect wildlife.
Spelled out specific quantities of the water needed in the river at certain
times of year to protect the whooping cranes, the fish, and the wet meadows
near the Platte that feed migrating birds.
Farm
groups and power districts hated the plan from day one.
[Farm spokesman testifying to the Legislature:] "It was
a widespread concern over the size of the flows requested in the applications
and the potential impact that those applications, if approved, would have on
the future of Nebraska."
Before the Legislature and countless other times, they argued
it set aside too much water for wildlife at the expense of their interests.
But in 1993 when public hearings about Game and Parks' plan for the river were
held, the commissioners hardly heard a word from those with the strongest objections.
John Cavanaugh of the Crane Trust was there and he's still puzzled by that lack
of opposition at the time.
[Cavanaugh:] "Why didn't they participate in the public
hearing process which the original applications were to be developed? Why didn't
they come there with scientific alternatives that address the habitat needs
of the state?"
The summaries of those hearings compiled by Game and Parks
show that those testifying at the early hearings, three out of four people supported
the original plan for the Platte River water. It also shows that some power
districts and natural resource districts were on hand to comment but not very
many. Instead of testifying, a new coalition of power districts and irrigators
threatened to sue Game and Parks. Facing lawsuits that could last for years
and cost a bundle, Commissioner Berryman agreed that maybe the coalition needed
to be heard.
[Berryman:] "When you get set to negotiate, you negotiate
and we were trying to mainly negotiate with the coalition." And only with the coalition. First, a private negotiating
session was held at Game and Parks headquarters. In weeks that followed three
other meetings were held without notice in motels in Kearney. A decision was
made to exclude any representatives of wildlife advocates for protecting the
Platte's habitat.
[Berryman:] "They've gotten more emotional about it subsequently,
but I believe that, you know, that they knew that the negotiating was going
on."
[Bill Kelly questioning Cavanaugh:] "When was the first
time anyone with the Trust found out that these negotiations were going on?"
[Cavanaugh:] "I think it was sometime in February, and
at that time there was some mention of it in the Omaha World-Herald."
[Kelly questioning Berryman:] "Did they ask to be involved
at that point?"
[Berryman:] "No, they did not."
[Cavanaugh:] "I wrote a three- or four-page letter to
the Commission expressing first of all surprise that the process was on-going
and requesting that the Trust and other -- any members of the public be included
in any further discussions."
[Kelly questioning Berryman:] "Could they have been if
they had asked?"
[Berryman:] "(sigh) I really don't know. I mean, I think they had a lot
of input prior to that."
[Cavanaugh:] "The secrecy of the process is necessary
for them because it doesn't stand up in public. It won't stand public scrutiny."
[Berryman:] "We didn't send out invitations. We never
had anyone come to any meetings and be barred from attending or having any input
into the meetings. You know, this is a subcommittee of the Game and Parks Commission
and this is generally how a subcommittee operates."
What the subcommittee
came up with was an entirely new view of how to manage Game and Parks' share
of the stream flows in the Platte River. Game and Parks Commission now claims
it needs only about half as much water to keep the habitat for fish and wildlife
and endangered species healthy and happy. STATEWIDE wanted a better idea of what justification the Game
and Parks Commission used to make such radical changes in the original Platte
Flow Agreement. We hoped the State's open records laws would help. After all
we were told these weren't secret sessions. We asked for copies of any notes
taken or documents presented to the subcommittee during these sessions. We were
told by the Game and Parks Commission, by the Nebraska Public Power District,
and by representative of the Water Resources Department who attended these sessions
that there is no written record of any of these meetings. They claim there were
no notes taken. There isn't a transcript, not even a summary of what was said
in any of the meetings nor is there any record of what the staff biologists
from the Game and Parks said about any changes made in the Platte Flow Agreement.
Commissioner Berryman claims it was all done with the support of Game and Parks
staff.
[Berryman:] "In other words we're assured by our biologists
that in the critical summertime flows which are the worst that we will be able
to maintain habitat for the fisheries of the river."
[Cavanaugh:] "It's clear from the agreement there was
no scientific basis with this coalition. It was purely political. There was
no economic analysis."
[Power diestrict
representative introducing a press conference:] "We're very, very pleased
to have these two consultants today."
While no formal scientific justification for the changes has
yet been released by Game and Parks, some idea of the data and science behind
the new agreement emerged a few days after it was released. It came at a press
conference sponsored by the power districts.
[Jim Chadwick, power district consultant:] "The species
composition of the fish communities in the central Platte River are stable.
They're relatively unchanged over time. In fact, if anything we found a population
that's more diverse than what was present during the late thirties."
A pair of consultants whose services were paid for by Public Power and the irrigators
claim that other studies showing the Platte River habitat is in danger are all
wrong. In fact, they argued, it's never been better.
[Dr. Carter Johnson, South Dakota State Univ.:] "These
results strongly support that equilibrium concept that we've used. They tend
to show that the river is, in fact, fairly stable or actually widening in terms
of channel area throughout most of its reach."
None of these reports have been presented to Game and Parks in public but biologists
for the power companies were allowed to make presentations in those closed door
negotiations lobbying for a new flow agreement that doesn't block irrigators
from using water they might need in the future someday.
[Jay Maher, Central Nebraska Public Power District:] "It's
not actually changing the amount of water out there but it takes into consideration
a number of these diminutus uses and changes that might occur in the future
for the water supply."
[Kelly:] "Your objections were almost preventive in a
way? You were concerned what could happen."
[Maher:] "I don't make policy on this, but that's how
I would understand that, yes."
And that's how the Nebraska Farm Bureau understands it. Its
representatives were allowed to negotiate in private for the coalition.
[Bryce Neidig, Nebraska Farm Bureau:] "By your own information
-- I say, your own, I mean Game and Parks -- their own biologists' information
-- that we now as the settlement says would guarantee 95% of the optimum flow
for wildlife habitat."
[Dean Edson, Nebraska Farm Bureau:] "Not one of the 31
opponents to this application objected to trying to find water for fish and
wildlife. We were all in this to try to make sure the fish and wildlife had
adequate water supplies."
But there are volumes of science supporting the earlier flow
agreement that claim those flows would not be enough. And a recent Fish and
Wildlife Service report backed them up:
[U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report:] "The best scientific
information available indicates the Platte River ecosystem resources are on
the decline in the long term."
The Game and Parks Commission Chair won't say when or even if there will be
another round of hearings to let the battling science and warring political
interests an opportunity to sort it out in public.
[Activist holding up a 'Wildbird' Magazine:] "[This is
a] guide to the ten top spring birding hot spots. And we in Nebraska are right
there. This is important territory for us in Nebraska."
The last public hearing made clear that the Platte River is
so vital to so many conflicting interests that neither side is ready to give
up and go away quietly.
For STATEWIDE, I'm Bill Kelly. After this story aired, the Omaha World Herald
reported that the Game and Parks' own biologists had condemned the negotiated
compromise in internal documents. The biologists had concluded that the proposed
flows would not provide enough water to protect the habitat for wildlife along
the Platte.
On May 17, 1996, the Commission met again in public session
and voted 5 to 3 to reject the compromise worked out by the subcommittee
in secret. So, they are back to the drawing board in the war over the Platte's
water.
Captioning by Nebraska
Captioning Center, Lincoln, Nebraska .
.
For an update on
the final decision of the Game and Parks Commission, click
here.
[Bill Berryman, Game and Parks Commissioner:]
"We will ensure that there will be some flows in that river, that they
can't totally dry up the river, and that's what we're trying to do is make sure
that the river doesn't totally dry up. But we also have to serve all the people
and all the needs of this state and that's what we're trying to do and still
maintain the integrity of the river."
[John Cavanaugh, Platte River Maintenance Trustee:] "They
took the whole public record that they've accumulated over the previous five
years and gutted it in two months of private sessions with people who didn't
participate in public and I just -- I can't understand that."
STATEWIDE wanted a better idea of what justification the Game
and Parks Commission used to make such radical changes in the original Platte
Flow Agreement. We hoped the State's open records laws would help. After all
we were told these weren't secret sessions. We asked for copies of any notes
taken or documents presented to the subcommittee during these sessions. We were
told by the Game and Parks Commission, by the Nebraska Public Power District,
and by representative of the Water Resources Department who attended these sessions
that there is no written record of any of these meetings. They claim there were
no notes taken. There isn't a transcript, not even a summary of what was said
in any of the meetings nor is there any record of what the staff biologists
from the Game and Parks said about any changes made in the Platte Flow Agreement.
Commissioner Berryman claims it was all done with the support of Game and Parks
staff. 