River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon (1996) / Chapter Skim
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2 SCOPE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE GLEN CANYON ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
2 SCOPE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE GLEN CANYON ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Pages 24-37
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environmental analysis effort and in part because they illustrate some difficulties inherent in government environmental research projects. SCOPE AS DEFINED BY MANAGENIENT OPTIONS, RESOURCES, AND THE ECOSYSTEM CONCEPT Management Options il The objective of GCES was to establish a basis for forecasting the ways n which various options for managing Glen Canyon Dam would affect all resources of value to society.
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Agencies, groups, and individuals, including scientists, have commonly judged management options on a mainly intuitive or single-factor basis. As pointed out in the first National Research Council (NRC)
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and initially excluded studies of power production (Chapter 9) because the BOR and WAPA began with the assumption that the dam would continue to be managed for production of maximum power revenues.
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Nonuse value seems particularly relevant in the case of the Grand Canyon because of the high aesthetic and intangible values attached to the region nationally and internationally and by Native American tribes (the BOR received 33,000 comments on the draft EIS for operation of Glen Canyon Dam)
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While such lists continue to be important in all environmental studies, including those of the Colorado River, the study plan must take into account the relationships among physical, chemical, biotic, and anthropogenic components of the environment. The ecosystem concept acknowledges that management of environmental systems operates within a framework whose components are functionally connected.
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OTHER INFLUENCES ON THE SCOPE OF GCES Administrative Policy The initial definition of scope for GCES was almost purely administrative in the sense that it did not reflect the geographic or conceptual extent of effects that might reasonably be connected with dam operations. The BOR directed GCES to deal with the Colorado River immediately below Glen Canyon Dam and to consider only changes in operations that would be neutral with respect to power revenues.
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For example, studies of archaeological sites by the National Park Service were arguably far more elaborate than they needed to be if defined by the original objectives of GCES rather than the more inclusive requirements of the EIS, which were augmented by the Park Service's interest in obtaining an archaeological inventory with monies originating outside its budget. As explained more fully in Chapter 10, individual agencies used their mission statements as guiding principles in defining research objectives rather than the specific needs of GCES.
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In 1987 the NRC committee criticized the GCES for failing to derive and follow a specific plan that, in turn, would be linked to alternative possibilities for operating Glen Canyon Dam. While the committee was quite successful in encouraging a badly needed expansion in the scope of GCES during the mid-1 980s, it was later much less successful in trying to move GCES toward greater focus of resources on a predetermined plan and exclusion of expenditures that could not be justified by the objectives of the program.
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While the BOR should be credited with assigning a full-time position to the management of GCES and placing the GCES budget in principle at the disposal of the project manager, the BOR failed to reinforce the independence and effectiveness of project management. The immediate reporting hierarchy ofthe project manager was initially critical of the fundamental basis for GCES and particularly of its expansion to a realistic geographic and conceptual scope.
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Furthermore, given that large, federal environmental studies will in the future increasingly involve multiple federal agencies with differing missions and priorities, the project manager for any large environmental assessment must be grantecl, for the benefit of the project, sufficient independence and authority over financial resources to override undue influence by individual agencies. The GCES experience shows that concentration of authority in the project leadership, and initial commitment to complete consideration of all management options and resources, including those that may be out of favor or controversial, will be the most likely strategies to conserve resources and produce outcomes useful to management.
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Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. National Research Council.
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