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Memo Irks CCMP Authors
Pete Wilson got his first official copy of the S.F. Estuary Project's Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) for the Bay and Delta on July 21, and some of the plan's authors - a 47-member management committee representing government agencies, cities, farms, business and the environmental community - aren't too happy about the cover memo that accompanied it.
"It talks only about the people who had problems with the plan," says Arliss Ungar of the League of Women Voters.
"It masks and misrepresents the committee's unanimous support for the final document," says Save the Bay's Barry Nelson.
What these and other CCMP authors hoped to see in the cover memo written by the SAC - a committee of state and federal sponsoring agencies who have provided policy guidance for the management committee during the CCMP's development - was a whole hearted endorsement encouraging the governor to concur with the document. What they got instead some called "incredibly disappointing" and others "outrageous."
The memo begins by highlighting "strong opposition" from agricultural and business interests to the plan's wetlands and aquatic resources sections.
"That a few holds outs who have always refused to compromise, who were only out to protect their own interests instead of working towards a common goal, should get their unexpurgated views expressed right up front makes a mockery, a sham, out of an honest, consensus-building process," says U.S. Fish & Wildlife's Jim McKevitt. "To those of us who made up a majority of the management committee, who worked hard for five years to take off our bowling shirts and agency hats in order to reach consensus, the memo stunk."
But Jim Haussener of the California Marine Parks and Harbors Association, who headed up the Project's Public Advisory Committee, was "glad to see the SAC had made a decision and got the CCMP off quickly to the governor."
While other CCMPs completed in the nation to date have won their governors' concurrence, Wilson's remains in question. His recent curtailment of state water policy initiatives and his ceding of leadership to the feds and the Endangered Species Act have left state and federal agencies embroiled in a muddy turf battle, possibly miring the CCMP in the no man's land between.
The cover memo tries to acknowledge all this conflict and uncertainty, an approach some management committee members view as politically pragmatic. "It allows the governor to sign with conditions," says Kassandra Fletcher of the Building Industry Assoc. of N. California. "Half a pie is better than no pie at all."
"I read it as a genuine attempt to resolve remaining concerns so we can move ahead with the CCMP," says Cal Fish & Game's Pete Chadwick. "I don't see it as an attempt to kill the plan."
But to Nelson, the memo made clear the state's interest in weakening the plan. The memo suggests that carrying out the plan might "further federalize the estuary, with concurrent loss of state control." McKevitt disagrees. "This isn't a program the feds are imposing on the state, it's a program developed by a carefully balanced committee of diverse interests, including the state."
The state clearly wants a bigger slice of the CCMP power pie. The memo reflects this in two ways. First, it suggests that there weren't enough representatives concerned with the plan's statewide economic and water supply impacts at the CCMP bargaining table. Second, it recommends that the governor designate a lead state agency to analyze the statewide impact of the plan. Some management committee members worry that this recommendation - made only by the state members of the SAC - could be a delaying tactic. Under the Clean Water Act, there is a 120-day time limit for the governor to concur and for EPA Administrator Carol Browner to approve the plan.
"Given the length of involvement the state's already had in the CCMP," says Nelson, "it's disingenuous for the SAC to say there's a need for further, lengthy review." Fletcher, on the other hand, was happy to see the commitment to further economic analysis. But she was unsure about the political undertones. "Is the EPA saying here state, we trust you to carry all this out? Or here state, you do all the work and then wait and see if we concur?"
But EPA - the only federal member of the SAC - didn't give any hint of its intentions in its closing paragraph to the memo, which simply says the agency "stands ready to assist in preparing a document appropriate for [Browner's] approval." It was this statement that disturbed the Army Corps' Tom Wakeman, who served as the Estuary Project's Technical Advisory Committee Chair. "Why should they draft a new document? What was our work, chopped liver?"
As the Estuary's future flounders through the ongoing state and federal water policy stalemate, the CCMP and its consensus process represent one of the most promising avenues for progress, according to Project Director Amy Zimpfer. Indeed, says Zimpfer, the CCMP stands out as "a rare and hard-won opportunity for meaningful, cooperative action," both to resolve age-old political and special interest conflicts and to conserve and restore the Bay and Delta.
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