Number range CHAPTER© 2004 by Leo Poppoff

July 22, 2004

Basin Watch

by

Leo Poppoff

YOU'LL BE ASKED TO HELP WITH AGENCY PLANS

Tahoe's major agencies are working to update their respective plans,
ordinances and regulations by 2007. Though they'll be pursuing separate
paths, they'll collaborate in the areas they have in common, such as
environmental thresholds. The effort is called Pathway 2007, or P7. And
-- this is important -- our participation in the process is considered
essential by the agencies.

Orchestrating collaboration between agencies and with the public is a
huge undertaking. So, P7 folks enlisted the help of The Center for
Collaborative Policy (CCP), a joint program of the California State
University at Sacramento and the University of Pacific's McGeorge School
of Law. CCP has extensive experience in orchestrating this kind of
collaborative effort.

David Ceppos is Senior Mediator at CCP. This is how he describes the
CCP. "We are passionate about our mission, which is to be neutral, to
protect a process, not to protect any one ideology or party, but to
design a process that allows people a deliberative role in democracy.

According to Ceppos, "one of the key goals of P7 is efficiencies,
efficiencies at the agency level in terms of staffing . . . not having
duplicative staffing, doing identical but separate types of work, but in
separate cubbyholes . . . and efficiencies at the public level, to avoid
having the public go and attend multiple meetings for multiple efforts
and have neither of those efforts ever talk to each other -- that's just
ludicrous."

"One of the things that we were able to identify was that all the
agencies had a need for conducting a robust visioning process to
identify socially shared, desired future conditions and activity. What
does the public envision the basin being like in 20 years?" So, how are
P7 folks going to find out what the public envisions for Tahoe?

According to Julie Regan, TRPA's Communications Director, "there will be
an overarching central committee composed of representatives of various
organizations and entities, and interests. It will be a primary advisory
committee to all the P7 agency decision-makers. That fairly large
central committee of 25 to 35 people would meet frequently, and be
responsible for making sure they represent several different voices --
environmental community, business community, homeowners, residents,
recreationalists, and visitors, to name a few.

"In addition," Regan explained, "there will be other opportunities,
other public workshops, inside and outside the basin. We're doing focus
groups and following up with telephone surveys to get baseline
information of what people want to see Tahoe look like in 20 years.
We've talked to people in Las Vegas, Sacramento, Reno, Carson and
Douglas Valleys, and inside the basin. Everyone had very passionate and
very strong opinions about Lake Tahoe and how to preserve it.

"What we're hoping to do in the fall," Regan added, "is have technical
committees go into a series of community visioning workshops -- open to
the public in the basin, and outside. The point of all this input is for
the technical folks to have a pulse of what the public cares about as
they're approaching the environmental thresholds and indicators. We want
to make sure the scientists doing the technical review and study have a
good sense of what is important to the public."

Ceppos pointed out that a fundamental caveat for Pathway 2007 is that
all the recommendations that will be made and, hopefully, all the
decisions that will be made in the P7 process need to fall in what he
calls a decision space. Visualize three bubbles, one of which is
regulatory and statutory constraints, another is scientific and
technical feasibility, and the third is public sentiment and opinion.

Ceppos explained that "there's some place where all three of these
overlap. And that is the decision space for P7. So, for instance,
nothing coming out of P7 can fly in the face of the Endangered Species
Act. Nothing should fly in the face of that which is believed to be
technically infeasible. Similarly, public sentiment becomes the third
framing aspect of the decision space."

So, there will be many opportunities for you and me to give the agencies
our opinions about future conditions at Tahoe and how to frame
regulations to achieve those conditions -- visioning workshops, meetings
with technical and planning committees, and perhaps, an interactive web
site.

Ceppos notes that "there are inherent limitations to how many folks we
can access. But there are online tools, software, that can essentially
allow for online facilitation and dialog to occur. Imagine the power of
not only being able to do these physical workshops, but having the
ability to get online with a virtual workshop."

Everyone involved knows that achieving Pathway 2007\'s goals is a big
challenge. Many very capable and enthusiastic people are trying hard to
make it work. Still, much of the success of P7 will depend on the active
participation of the public. We'll have several opportunities over the
next three years to get involved. If we don't take advantage of them,
we'll only have ourselves to blame.

Comments? Send them to
[[basinwatch@sbcglobal.net]{.underline}](mailto:basinwatch@sbcglobal.net)