Support of Land Management Agencies - A Western Region Perspective

To: "A  - Division Chief and Staff"<distribution@usgs.gov>,
        "B  - Branch Chiefs and Offices"<distribution@usgs.gov>,
        "DC - All District Chiefs"<distribution@usgs.gov>
cc: "Wendy E Norton, Program Analyst, Reston, VA" <wenorton@usgs.gov>,
        "James G Peters, Acting Program Officer, Reston, VA" <jgpeters@usgs.gov>,
        "Joanne C Taylor, Secretary (Typing), Reston, VA" <jctaylor@usgs.gov>,
        "Janet N Arneson, Secretary (Typing), Reston, VA" <jarneson@usgs.gov>
Subject: Support of Land Management Agencies - A Western Region Perspective
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 1995 12:04:22 -0500
From: "James G Peters, Acting Program Officer, Reston, VA" <jgpeters@usgs.gov>

Recently, I received the following memo from John Conomos regarding
USGS support (or non-support) of Land Management Agencies with our
Federal Program funds.  As I'm sure you're aware, this issue is
gaining importance for us.  The NBS has a formal process in place for
directly soliciting input from other agencies in DOI in establishing
their priorities for spending their appropriated funds.  Not
surprisingly, this idea is very popular with the other agencies; they
would like to see more effort from USGS in this regard.  Also, NMD and
GD have examples of this type of direct solicitation process, albeit
on a smaller scale (A-16, minerals program.)  But currently, WRD has
no such process; NAWQA (and other programs) certainly solicit input
from other agencies, but we're hard pressed to show that the input
directly establishes our priorities.  A knee-jerk response to this
situation might be for WRD to try to stretch the definition of
"support" to make our efforts look more significant than they might
otherwise be.  But the Western Region suggests otherwise.

As we are now developing documentation on WRD's support for other
agencies within DOI (and the Forest Service), your thoughts on Western
Region's position would be much appreciated.  Thanks....

P.S.  We appreciate the many examples of support for land
mgmt. agencies that we've received in the past few days.  The reason
I've asked our field offices to hold up on doing anything additional
is that the Director's office is looking for more quantitative
information of funding, number of reports, etc.  We'vre trying to see
how much of this infromation we can put together here at Headquarters.
With luck we can substantially reduce the work required for the
Regions and Districts.  So please stand by on this one.

Here's the Western Region's memo.....

                       Water Resources Division
                            Western Region
                  345 Middlefield Road, Mail Stop 470
                      Menlo Park, California 94025

                                                   November 21, 1995

                              MEMORANDUM

To:       Acting Program Officer
          Water Resources Division

From:     T. John Conomos
          Regional Hydrologist

Subject:  Support of Land Management Agencies in Department of the
          Interior

We offer a word of caution about how hard the Division tries to erase the 
misconception that USGS is an isolated Bureau within the Department that 
does not adequately support its sister land management agencies (LMAs).  
We do not think it is all misconception, particularly for WRD.  There is, 
in our opinion, a very real inadequacy in WRD's support of LMAs.  
Although we cannot speak authoritatively for GD or NMD, we do have the 
perception that they are performing considerably better 
than WRD in supporting sister LMAs with their own funds.  

This challenge by Secretary Babbitt might be a unique opportunity for 
WRD to admit it has a problem (not of its own making), and thereby 
obtain both the Bureau and Departmental support for an initiative to 
fund more WRD support of the LMAs.  Western Region has been preaching the 
need for such an initiative for 2 years, mostly because of emerging 
issues in the West.  The Federal agencies in the West are turning en 
masse to the pay-to-play concept, and WRD has stepped to the table in a 
penny-ante fashion (No one need be offended by the analogy, because we 
did not create our situation.).  Examples where we have not been, or will 
not be able to respond adequately, include the President's Forest Plan, 
the Eastside Ecosystem Assessment (now called the Interior Columbia Basin 
Ecosystem Management Project), Kesterson Reservoir (past and present 
issues), NAFTA, and some aspects of the Lower Colorado.  

We are fully aware that if an initiative goes forward to support LMAs, 
it will come from existing programs.  We believe that WRD's deficiency 
in support to them is so great that we must find a funding mechanism.  
If we do not, we will dig an ever deeper hole with the LMAs, and the 
hydrology work will go elsewhere.

We support the effort to document what we are doing in support of the 
LMAs, but fear that might be overdone.  We propose that we demonstrate 
what we are doing well, admit our failures, explain why we have the 
problem, and seek Bureau and Departmental support for an initiative 
solution.  

------- End of Forwarded Message