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Platte River Basin: Platte River Cooperative Agreement Between Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and the US Department of Interior is attempting to develop a recovery program for three threatened and endangered species that seasonally visit the Platte River and study the ramifications of the proposed program on the lower Platte River for the Pallid Sturgeon. NWU has spent 3 years helping to negotiate the Cooperative Agreement and now have spent 4.5 years negotiating a proposed "Program". The Program is to serve as the Reasonable and Prudent Alternative (RPA) to ESA Section #7 consultations for the Public Power Districts and several Bureau of Reclamation Irrigation Districts in Nebraska with their federal contract renewals. Hundreds of other projects in Wyoming and Colorado with a federal nexus would also receive RPA status from the Program. The Fish and Wildlife Service has failed to achieve numerous milestones to the agreement yet forces strict accountability too the states in meeting their milestones. FWS has continually brought up new issues in an attempt to "ratchet up" the requirements the states, individual projects and eventually landowners must provide to the Program delaying the species recovery program start. Millions of dollars have been spent thus far and projections of $150,000,000 dollars are to be spent by the end of the first 13-year increment of the program loom. The Programs first increment is to do three things. One is to provide 130,000 / 150,000 Acre Feet (Af) of additional water in the river to help eliminate the annual FWS Target Flow shortage of 417,000 Af. Two, is to provide 10,000 acres of the 29,000 additional habitat acres sought on the Platte River. And three is to force the states into a "No New Depletions Policy" on the Platte River stopping future economic development. All Program milestones are to be completed and a Program signed by the "new" date of July 2003. NWU continues the beneficial representation of our members by following our "10 Principles" in all Program negotiations.
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