Missouri River Basin Association

____________________

Summary of Small Group Sessions

MRBA Stakeholder Monitoring Forum

Day 2:  December 12, 2003

1. Do any of the bills in your packet adequately address the scope of monitoring discussed in yesterday’s small groups and do any of them provide the appropriate role for stakeholders?

Generally, the groups agreed that the MRBA version of a monitoring bill is better than the House or Senate version, even though it still needs work.  Things that participants liked about the MRBA bill are that it includes monitoring of social and economic impacts resulting from river re-operations, it involves stakeholders, and it contains “cleaner” language than the other two bills.  All the groups seemed to agree that stakeholder involvement is very important to a monitoring program and that the stakeholder involvement should be spelled out in the bill language.  Some thought the MRBA bill spelled out the stakeholder role adequately, while others thought that none of the bills gave the stakeholders any real power in a monitoring program.  One person said that a congressionally authorized stakeholder committee would carry more weight with the Corps of Engineers.  Another suggested that the bill language was too broad to define the scope of the program. 

Several opinions were expressed concerning the make-up of the stakeholder committee and the monitoring program in general.   One respondent expressed a discomfort with the involvement of the Secretary of Interior in the process.  Another said that representatives of agricultural interests from upstream and downstream need to be included in the stakeholder committee.  Yet another suggested that MRBA should be involved in helping choose those to be on the stakeholder committee due to MRBA’s familiarity with users in the basin. 

One respondent said that the scope of a monitoring program should be similar to what is being monitored in Glen Canyon.  Another said that the stakeholder group should define the scope of the monitoring program.  There was a suggestion to monitor the costs and benefits of the habitat restoration work conducted and proposed by the Corps.  Another person mentioned the importance of doing research on pallid sturgeon, including its historic range.  

The respondents offered some final suggestions, including the following:  The program needs to have adequate funds to do data management and synthesis across the disciplines of the research; the program needs a coordinator to oversee the work; the data generated by the program needs to be made available to the public via the internet.

2. Does the Corps’ proposed Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee (MRRIC) provide the appropriate role for stakeholders?

There was disagreement as to whether the stakeholder committee would (or should) replace MRRIC.  Some thought the stakeholder committee would eventually become the MRRIC, while others believed that the stakeholder committee should have a broader scope than MRRIC.  People generally felt that MRRIC is a good beginning for a stakeholder group but that more information is needed on MRRIC’s purpose, scope and authority before judgment is made on its value to the basin.  The differences between MRRIC and the stakeholder group as outlined in the MRBA monitoring bill need to be worked out soon.  One person suggested that it is important to get an interim stakeholder group in place, regardless what it is called.  Another person said that the basin states’ Governors, MRBA, and the Corps should work together to select members of MRRIC.  People were generally pleased that the MRBA bill called for funding the stakeholder committee and that if MRRIC is authorized, it also needs to be adequately funded.  Some participants thought that the Corps should be bound by what the stakeholder committee or MRRIC recommends, while others thought the groups should be advisory in nature.

3. What components of the various bills need to be retained or deleted?

The participants supported several components of the MRBA and/or the Senate version of the monitoring bills.  They liked the emphasis on using data for decision-making.   They liked the section of the MRBA bill that established the program, although it was suggested that the state water quality agencies be added to the list of groups who are consulted.  They also supported the fact that the MRBA bill included social and economic impact monitoring in, the information integration and distribution component of the bill, and the way funding was distributed in the MRBA bill. 

The participants felt that the bills could be broadened in certain ways.  They suggested that the research may be too heavily weighted towards the pallid sturgeon and that some of the research effort should also be directed to the least tern and piping plover.   Some felt that the pallid sturgeon research should be expanded to the Yellowstone River to discover why the pallid population is in decline there.  Others suggested that the program purpose needs to be broadened beyond just evaluating the impact of flow changes, and that the program should look at all the recovery needs of the species.   One person asked if some of the species recovery focus could be moved to the Yellowstone River.  Another suggested that Tribal involvement outlined in the bills ought to include those Tribes on tributaries as well as those whose reservations are located along the main stem of the Missouri River.

There was much support for the stakeholder involvement outlined in the MRBA bill, and the need to authorize a stakeholder group in whatever legislation ultimately is passed by Congress.  The participants also discussed the need to provide adequate long-term funding for stakeholder group.  Some people felt the size of the stakeholder group should not be so small as to exclude participants who should and want to participate on it.  One person suggested that the governors should not appoint members of the stakeholder committee.  Another suggestion was that the stakeholder group be exclusively non-governmental.  Generally, people seemed to feel that the group should have some degree of authority. 

There were several comments supporting the independent science and peer review included in the MRBA version of the bill.   Some suggested that one way to get independent science was to set aside funding for small colleges and universities.

Finally, people offered the suggestion that the final bill language include some flexibility on such things as the make-up of the stakeholder committee and the ability to adjust the program focus and how funds are spent as we learn more about the river.

4. What additional items should a Missouri River monitoring bill include?

One suggestion that surfaced was that the bill ultimately passed by Congress should focus on three areas:  threatened and endangered species; ecosystem recovery; and socio-economic impacts of flow changes in the river. One person thought there should be a line item in the budget to specifically fund the social and economic studies.  Another suggestion was to expand the impact analysis to other uses of the river, such as power production and sports fisheries.  There was a suggestion to add representatives of the state and tribal water quality agencies to the establishment portion of the bill language.  Someone suggested adding a data analysis section to the bill and a statement as to how the information gathered through monitoring and research will be used in the decision making process.  Others believed the bill should spell out how to make the data and its analysis readily available to the public.  One suggestion was to establish a clearinghouse for information that will be readily available to the stakeholder committee and the general public. One person cautioned that the bill needs to be very specific about who controls the money appropriated to the monitoring program.

Someone observed that none of the bills have outlined an effective way to appoint people to the stakeholder committee, and that more time is needed to figure out a process for making those appointments.  However, another person said that perfection can be the enemy of the good, and that we should perhaps begin without worrying about getting things perfect.   Someone questioned the need for another basin group, since we already have MRBA, MRNRC, and the Missouri River Roundtable.  A good way to begin the stakeholder group, according to one participant, would be through facilitated meetings.  This would give people the opportunity to participate from the onset and allow the stakeholder committee to be part of the scoping process for the program.  People believed that the stakeholder committee should make recommendations to the Corps and other agencies on T&E species as well as other issues, and that the applicable federal agency should give special weight to those recommendations, unless they are arbitrary and capricious or contrary to law.