| North Cascades |
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Chapter 11:
HYDROPOWER AND PRESERVATION
Hydroelectric developments, both existing and proposed, took center stage in the park complex's management in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The license for Seattle City Light's Skagit River Hydroelectric Project (FERC No. 553) expired, leading to the Park Service's involvement in the lengthy and complicated relicensing proceedings. Proposed hydropower projects appeared on the scene as well when dozens of applications for small hydropower projects were filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Many of these were in or near Ross Lake National Recreation Area. These, in addition to some other hydropower issues, forced park managers to attempt to protect park resources without infringing on FERC's authority. In all cases, preservation became the ultimate goal; achieving it required diligence and creativity.
One of the most important accomplishments in the management of the North Cascades complex was the relicensing of Seattle City Light's Skagit Project. Until the project was relicensed for a thirty-year period, the Park Service could not approach the protection of Ross Lake NRA in a comprehensive manner. As the High Ross Dam affair demonstrated, the future of Ross Lake was uncertain, and the way to ensure that there would be appropriate recreational developments and resource protection programs for this area was through the licensing process. The problem was that even though City Light's license for the project expired in 1977, its renewal was delayed until the High Ross controversy had been resolved in 1984. Until that time, and for sometime thereafter, FERC allowed the city to operate under an annual license.
Thus, in 1984 once the international treaty ending the High Ross dispute was signed, the Park Service prepared to move forward again as one of the intervenors in the licensing process. Besides High Ross, a number of plans in City Light's license concerned agency managers. One of these was the Thunder Creek project, which called for constructing a diversion dam on Thunder Creek and using a tunnel to divert its water through Ruby Mountain into Ross Lake. Another was the Copper Creek project, which called for building a dam near the western boundary of Ross Lake NRA. These were significant issues for the Park Service in its efforts to protect the recreation area's natural and cultural values, especially since the license would have such a lasting effect.
Initially, the Park Service picked up where it had left off in the 1970s. It began with Exhibit R, the section of the Skagit project's license that was essentially a recreation plan. In this regard, the Park Service could require from City Light that it develop a substantial portion of the recreational facilities managers believed would be necessary for the protection and public use of Ross Lake NRA. Even though the Park Service had no legal control over the project itself, it could under the Federal Power Act (and the authority of the Secretary of the Interior) direct City Light to mitigate any adverse effects caused by the project. In the early 1970s, park officials had concentrated on one element of City Light's operations, High Ross. They reached an agreement in which the city would compensate the agency for the loss of existing facilities -- campsites, bridges, trails, and boat docks, among other things -- and provide new ones, all of which would enhance recreation in the area. They also were aware that City Light's license was due to expire and that they would need to develop a plan to cover the entire project. [1]
By 1984, however, the Park Service had changed its views on what it wanted from Exhibit R. In one respect, this change reflected practical concerns. Regional Director Daniel Tobin noted that it was important that park managers act quickly because the recreation plan was out of date. In September 1977, nearly one month before the Skagit project's license expired, Seattle City Light had filed an application for a new license. [2] The application, Tobin asserted, contained provisions for an initial five-year program in which City Light would contribute $500,000 to fund the construction of four major facilities. The trouble with this plan was that the funds were in 1977 dollars. In addition, Exhibit R provided for a continuing program at five-year intervals beginning in the fourth year of the first phase. This continuing program would have been a cooperative effort between the Park Service and City Light. Although no dollar figure was attached to this second phase, the language in the plan suggested that it would be less than phase one of the program.
Tobin's interest stemmed from the fact that the plan had never really been implemented. Many of the facilities "included in the Initial Program have been constructed by the National Park Service with appropriated funds." He outlined several ways to approach City Light for reimbursement as part of the revised Exhibit R. One way was direct repayment to the government for the cost of facilities; another was reimbursement through donation to the Park Service for future development at the recreation area. A similar approach would have been the identification of other facilities needed at the recreation area which City Light would provide. And a final possibility was an approach that combined both financial compensation and the identification of new projects. Whatever approach managers chose, it should adjust the estimate for inflation. [3] Moreover, behind the regional director's interest was the fear that the international treaty might grant City Light unilateral authority over raising Ross Dam, should Canada break the agreement, and grant it similar authority over relicensing. This, it seems, was a view espoused by the attorneys for City Light. [4] Tobin's worry, that City Light might find a way to exclude the Park Service from the current relicensing proceedings by using the treaty, was unfounded, but it did underscore that the Park Service viewed relicensing seriously.
On another level, the Park Service approached relicensing with broader goals, goals that included recreation but also the preservation of natural and cultural values within the recreation area. As we have seen, the agency's interest sprang from a new environmental awareness, the passage of major environmental legislation, and changes in popular attitudes towards the construction of more hydroelectric dams on the nation's last free-running rivers. Thus, the Park Service looked for ways to mitigate the impacts of the project as a whole while enhancing the environment and other intrinsic qualities of the recreation area at the same time. To a large extent, this approach was what many intervenors supported. Indian tribes, environmental groups, and state and federal agencies, many of whom had participated in the High Ross battle, saw relicensing as an opportunity "to redress the unmitigated impacts of the Skagit Project." [5]
It was a situation City Light had not foreseen, for in the past its applications to develop and expand the Skagit Project had proceeded smoothly, its work viewed as a social amenity rather than as an ecological disaster. To City Light's credit, it established an Environmental Affairs Division to handle compliance with the numerous environmental regulations affecting hydroelectric operations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and to take the lead in negotiations for the new license.
City Light's approach to relicensing grew from its experience on several fronts, such as with High Ross, but also with controversy surrounding its interim relicensing agreement after 1977. Indian tribes, state and federal agencies clashed with the city in 1979 when the Federal Power Commission accepted the utility's application for relicensing. The various parties filed motions asserting that City Light had not studied or presented ways to mitigate the project's major impacts on fisheries. Furthermore, the state of Washington severely criticized the city for a similar lack of consideration and measures for mitigating impacts on wildlife. The outcome of all of this was an interim agreement with the city, agencies, and tribes signed in 1981. The agreement recognized that more information was needed on fisheries issues, and thus stipulated that City Light would modify operations and conduct studies to assess the project's impacts on fisheries. Other studies, however, to address concerns for wildlife populations and recreation went unaddressed. To a large extent these were overwhelmed by the fisheries studies, which were scheduled for completion in the mid-1980s, and formed another reason for delaying the relicensing process. [6]
Public reactions against City Light's Copper Creek project offered perhaps the most visible example of the new circumstances faced by the utility. In 1979, the Seattle City Council approved an environmental impact statement for the dam. The dam, however, was controversial. Skagit County residents viewed the project with trepidation since it would be constructed in an area lined with dangerous fault zones. Other interests, such as environmental groups, fisherman's groups, and river rafters, opposed the project because it would have inundated a ten-mile stretch of the free-running Skagit River, harmed wintering bald eagle habitat, and destroyed highly productive salmon spawning grounds. Most importantly, the Skagit tribes had recently won a court decision over reserved treaty rights for fishing, and asserted their interest in stopping the project since it threatened to destroy the fishery for which they had fought to protect. The tribes assumed the lead in protesting against the dam, and other groups allied with them. [7]
Their arguments provided a convincing case. Studies showed that the dam would flood important salmon spawning beds, thus reducing the number of salmon in the river. Directly related to the fate of the salmon was the fate of the bald eagles who wintered on this section of the Skagit. Without the salmon carcasses, on which the eagles usually fed, the eagle population would suffer and decline. The Nature Conservancy, who owned a 300-acre eagle sanctuary downstream from the dam site, called for City Light to abandon the project. Other studies and events mounted against the public acceptance of the new dam as well. Adding to the Skagit's intrinsic value was its recent congressional designation as a wild and scenic river in 1978, under the Wild and Scenic River Act. The designation mandated that this federally-recognized "wild" river remain in its current condition and that all projects that might affect this be evaluated. This and other environmental legislation, like the Endangered Species Act, could have restricted the city's development of Copper Creek. Similar to the High Ross proposal, a report concluded that conservation and the use of solar energy rather than the construction of a new hydroelectric facility would provide more energy at a lower cost to City Light. Because of public opposition, concerns over environmental protection, and the small amount of power return (the project would have illuminated a few office buildings downtown for the cost of a $137 million dam), the Seattle City Council shelved the Copper Creek project indefinitely in August 1981. [8]
The effect, however, was not immediate, and tensions mounted. In 1986, leaders of the North Cascades Conservation Council, David Fluharty and Patrick Goldsworthy, urged City Light to engage in the relicensing proceedings. Specifically, they asserted that City Light was obligated to study ways to mitigate the effects of the Skagit Project's original inundations behind Gorge, Diablo, and Ross dams. In reply, Randall Hardy, superintendent of Seattle City Light, informed Fluharty and Goldsworthy that his agency's view on the matter was quite different from theirs. In the first place, progress in relicensing was, it seems, awaiting the completion of studies on the project's impacts on downstream fisheries, related directly to reservoir fluctuations. Second, Hardy believed that, contrary to the conservation council's opinion, City Light had conducted "extensive studies of adjacent habitat areas and recreational use...in connection with the High Ross proceedings and in support of the 1977 application for relicensing." These studies, according to the superintendent, provided a "sufficient base of field study" to understand generally the "effects of original inundation and to allow an approximate reconstruction of the habitats now submerged under Ross Lake." Hardy, it seems, was suggesting that the studies conducted for High Ross and those nearing completion for downstream fisheries should be enough for the entire project. Or, put another way, as Ross Lake went, so too did the rest of the Skagit Project. [9]
The council, though, had raised concerns far beyond what City Light's studies had addressed. They were concerns especially important to the Park Service. Council members stressed that in relicensing the Skagit Project, City Light should consider "mitigation for upstream impacts relating to wildlife populations and to recreational and scientific values associated with reservoir inundation, in other words, the area now included within Ross Lake NRA." According to Associate Regional Director Richard Winters, this was "a somewhat new direction for the deliberations," one that had "not been considered previously." This new dimension became more attractive to agency officials over the next several years, and recreational needs would soon be one of several areas of interest as they negotiated with City Light over its project's impact on the entire recreation area. [10]
In 1987, Superintendent John Reynolds and his staff made the first formal step in the negotiations when they submitted a recreational development proposal for Ross Lake NRA to be funded by City Light under its new license. But in a short period of time, the entire process and scope of the park's perspective changed. One reason for this change was that FERC seems to have grown tired of City Light's delays. In October 1988, FERC notified City Light that it had nine months to submit its application. More than ten years had passed since the city's license had expired, and it had yet to submit the various packages to the federal agency as required by the Federal Power Act and its amendments. Specifically, the city needed to complete mitigation studies under Exhibit E in 18 CFR Ch. 1; these were far more inclusive than Exhibit R (a section revised to become Exhibit E). The reports covered water use and quality; fish, wildlife, and botanical resources; historical and archaeological resources; recreational resources; and land management and aesthetics. [11]
In response to FERC's order, City Light asked for and received an extension of at least eighteen months, so it could seek a comprehensive, negotiated settlement agreed to by all parties to the relicensing proceedings. Broadly speaking, the city was attempting to streamline a complicated process. Each intervenor had the right to petition FERC independently, in a sense challenging City Light's application and compelling it to respond as to why it had not addressed such measures. This approach could, and often did, lead to hostile rather than amicable relations, and the chances for a fair settlement were remote. As it turned out, both City Light and the various parties, including the Park Service, saw the advantages to a settlement and agreed to negotiate an agreement which would then be presented to FERC for its approval. [12]
In January 1989, Jonathan Jarvis, the park complex's chief of resource management, expressed a second reason for the Park Service's shift in its approach to relicensing, a reason that was related directly to Exhibit E because of its full range of natural and cultural investigations. For the first time, park complex managers began to think that the entire process held indefinite possibilities for their understanding and protection of Ross Lake NRA. Central to the Park Service's involvement, Jarvis noted, was its position that the project should be "operated and the effects of its presence be mitigated so as to have 'no effect' on the function of the larger ecosystem." Thus, the agency decided that the "recreational potential be developed only to the point that the recreational use has 'no effect' on the function of the ecosystem." [13]
What Jarvis and other managers were suggesting was that this position was the best one available to them. The complex's original legislation, after all, prohibited the agency's outright opposition to the Skagit Project. And though the recently passed 1988 Washington Park Wilderness Act restricted FERC's authority to City Light's existing project and proposed projects within the recreation area, the fact remained that FERC still had authority over the Skagit Project's operations. Thus, the debate for park managers centered on understanding the consequences of the continued occupancy of the area by the Skagit Project. However attractive in an Edward Abbey sense of environmental reclamation, removing the project was not a viable option. But assessing the changes brought about to the natural and cultural environments of the Skagit country by the project was viable -- and critical to protecting the recreation area's values. [14]
The task ahead was not a simple one. North Cascades managers had to integrate all of the categories within Exhibit E into "a coherent package." The first stage in this process was determining the effects of the project's past and continued presence for the next three decades through a series of studies funded by City Light. Rather than rely on the utility to provide the information to the park, managers decided to participate in the studies. Park and regional office staff assisted City Light by writing scopes of work for contracts, serving as technical advisors, and participating on habitat evaluation teams. When it came to erosion and archaeological studies, the Park Service conducted the work for City Light under several memoranda of agreement.
The studies, conducted in the late 1980s, concluded that the project had significantly affected the upper Skagit Valley. Wildlife and vegetation studies indicated that large habitat losses contributed to the decline of at least ten wildlife species. Recreation studies found that over all the impoundments had a serious influence on the management of Park Service lands and limited the potential management of adjacent recreational resources. More specifically, the level of Ross Lake, dictated by power generation and flood control, directly affected recreational boating and fishing. Soil erosion studies concluded that the project caused, primarily through fluctuating lake levels, more than sixteen miles of eroding shoreline and resulted in an estimated loss of 1.5 acres a year. Visual quality and aesthetics studies indicated that the entire project, consisting of dams, reservoirs, company towns, roads, and power transmission corridors, affected the aesthetics of the recreation area. The transmission lines had the greatest visual impact. Studies of the upper Skagit basin's cultural resources revealed more than 120 prehistoric sites within the drawdown of Ross Lake. In all cases, Ross Lake's continuous fluctuations caused materials to erode from these archaeological sites, and in some cases, this action caused the loss of, or endangered, the integrity of these sites. Finally, the fisheries studies suggested that the flow of the Skagit River, controlled by power production and flood control, had an adverse effect on downstream fisheries. Spawning habitat was particularly damaged. While salmon and steelhead species were the primary focus of these studies, they also suggested that many other resident fish experienced similar disturbances due to stream flows, and that changing lake levels influenced the vitality of lake fisheries. [15]
The next stage in the process was one of the hardest, deciding what to ask for in the mitigation package. Initially, the park complex's various divisions, such as resource management and interpretation, held a series of meetings to draw up a "wish list" of projects and proposals. They had several park-wide plans on which to rely. The most important of these, perhaps, was the 1988 general management plan which outlined some long-range projects. More specifically, the recreational development proposal submitted to City Light in 1987, with some modifications, proved to be useful. Recently completed resource and wilderness management plans also identified a list of needs. The relicensing process, however, offered managers the opportunity to address issues and develop programs that the Park Service might not otherwise fund. Thus, the final list, complete with specific details and cost estimates, was a product of both approved plans and long-term needs. It also reflected a screening process involving a number of criteria; each project was evaluated for its environmental impact, consistency with approved park complex plans, opportunity for other sources of funding, and direct relationship to the impacts of the Skagit Project itself. One thing that was not a limiting factor in the development of the final package was cost. City Light had not set a cost ceiling, yet it was understood that the utility's net worth was $100 million.
The Park Service's mitigation package proved to be quite effective as the agency entered the next phase of the process, the negotiation forums. City Light's Environmental Affairs Division established five forums for negotiation, all of which reflected the topics listed under Exhibit E. These were fisheries, recreation and aesthetics, wildlife, erosion, and cultural resources. The division's specialists led the forums, and the intervenors attended those forums in which they had an interest. Given the range of the Park Service's responsibilities, North Cascades managers participated in all five. The meetings were time consuming and rigorous, especially since FERC's deadline was approaching. Members of the park complex's resource management staff, assisted by regional office specialists, attended more than one hundred meetings in a one-year period. Each forum was charged with developing both an agreement and a mitigation plan. This process, though complex enough considering the number of intervenors and interests, was made even more complex when one considers the overlap between forums; there was always the chance that mitigation procedures for one problem might have a negative effect on another. For those in the fisheries forum, for example, maintaining downstream river flows was essential to the protection of spawning salmon. Yet this meant that lake levels would fluctuate leading to problems with erosion, recreational boat launching, in-lake fish spawning, and lake aesthetics. The formation of loose coalitions among the forums and convening of informal conferences helped resolve many of these concerns.
What remained to be accomplished was the final settlement itself. There was little to no precedence for the approach City Light was taking to the relicensing process, and thus there was little upon which to base expectations. Moreover, there were few ground rules throughout the meetings, and each intervenor approached the negotiations differently. Some parties held their cards close. But as Jon Jarvis recalled, the Park Service showed its cards early. Having a package was quite effective because it told City Light everything his agency wanted, from greenhouses to an environmental institute and what it all would cost. The surprise, though, was that City Light seemed willing to accept the park's offer. The real test, however, came with legal review. Relicensing and settlement agreements were a legal process, and technical advisors and lawyers representing the various federal and state agencies and other intervenors worked with City Light lawyers to produce a legal document that actually "reflected the technical intent of the negotiators."
Still, bringing all of the parties together was stressful in the final months of negotiations. City Light was especially fearful that there would be a break in ranks, that one disgruntled party could derail the entire process and jeopardize relicensing. As a result, in September 1990 all parties signed a preliminary agreement in which they agreed to abide by the proposals already on the table. Though nonbinding, the agreement was the first formal commitment by the intervenors and Seattle City Light. The document seems to have served its purpose, because in November one First Nation from Canada, the Nlaka'pamux Nation (the Lower Thompsons), unexpectedly tried to join the proceedings. Seattle City Light refused the Nlaka'pamux Nation's request and negotiated an independent agreement with the group after it had a final settlement agreement. The signing of an official settlement by all parties took place on April 26, 1991, and City Light submitted it to FERC on May 1, 1991. [16]
Although subject to FERC's approval, the settlement was "unprecedented nationally," according to City Light, and had profound benefits for North Cascades. The agreement stipulated that City Light would pay $100 million for mitigation over a thirty year period (for a total of fifty years beginning when the original license expired in 1977). Some of the more noteworthy provisions were that City Light agreed to
The license also contained a controversial element. City Light still maintained that High Ross was viable, and included it in the license. In order to move negotiations along, intervenors decided to take High Ross off the table; however, they did not support the project, and the settlement agreement contained measures to reopen negotiations if High Ross should proceed. Finally, High Ross did not pose the great dilemma for the Park Service as it once had. The agency still could not oppose the project, but with the various natural and cultural resource studies conducted for the relicensing, managers could make a strong case that Ross Lake country was "a good piece of land that shouldn't be lost." [18]
Moving from negotiations to implementation of the settlement agreement awaited FERC's approval of Seattle City Light's license. Park officials expected approval to come sometime in 1994, after the commission had completed its review of the license application and conducted an environmental assessment for the agreement. It was this very process, however, that threatened the entire agreement. At least, that was how Seattle City Light and the parties to the settlement viewed the commission's actions. The critical measure upon which the settlement agreement rested was the condition that FERC accept the package as a whole; any "material modification" would void the agreement at the option of any party. Throughout 1991, FERC seemed poised to do just that with its environmental assessment of the Skagit Project, because it was considering it as part of its larger study of the cumulative impacts of hydroelectric projects (existing and proposed) in the Skagit Basin. The energy commission staff noted that by taking this approach it might require City Light to carry out more mitigation -- in addition to the settlement -- or in place of parts of the mitigation settlement. Either scenario, noted one City Light official, "could be a deal killer." [19]
The National Park Service requested that FERC reconsider its environmental assessment. It was unclear, Regional Director Charles Odegaard wrote, how the commission intended to integrate the Skagit Project with its larger study of the Skagit Basin. City Light's Skagit Project lay entirely within Ross Lake NRA and the "direct impacts on the park" were limited to the project. More importantly, Odegaard, echoing the concerns of all parties involved, urged FERC to consider the magnitude of the agreement at stake. More than a decade of work had gone into this settlement agreement that already contained a negotiated mitigation package, as required by the commission, for the Skagit Project's effects on the recreation area's various resources. [20] To the relief of park managers and others, FERC's environmental assessment exempted the Skagit Project from the cumulative environmental assessment because it did not have "the potential for adverse impacts to at least one target resource" (anadromous fish, recreation, cultural resources, and sensitive terrestrial ecological resources). Thus, the commission recommended a separate assessment for the project, which, it proclaimed, "would range from no effects to substantially beneficial effects" under conditions proposed in the settlement offer. [21]
Such a positive statement belied the energy commission's treatment of the settlement agreement. In its draft environmental assessment for the Skagit Project's license, which was released March 3, 1994, FERC included a preferred alternative that tracked the settlement agreement. But the license the agency issued did not. What the Park Service and other interested parties soon realized was that FERC had packaged the offer of settlement and modified some of the individual mitigation agreements to meet what it viewed as necessary for issuing a license. This did not necessarily reflect what the parties believed was the true intent of their agreement. Among other things, North Cascades managers argued that the proposed license terms were substantially different from any alternative evaluated by the environmental assessment. Managers also noted that the energy commission had omitted funds for long-term monitoring in Ross Lake NRA because the commission concluded in its assessment that relicensing the Skagit Project would have no cumulative adverse impacts and would even have beneficial effects on the Skagit Basin. (This applied to both environmental and cultural resources.) Therefore, FERC used this analysis when it reviewed City Light's license, all of which seems to have mystified City Light, the Park Service, and other intervenors. As the Department of the Interior related in its comments on the draft assessment, FERC's review was inadequate and fell short of the requirements under the Federal Power Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The department recommended that the commission need not conduct its own environmental analysis of each of the settlement agreements. The proposed action was to "relicense the Skagit River Project as mitigated by the measures described in the Settlement Agreements and to implement those mitigation and enhancement measures." In other words, much of the commission's work had already been considered and it should have spent its time considering the various proposals as part of a comprehensive package designed to streamline the assessment process. [22]
In May 1995, Seattle City Light, along with all of the parties to the settlement agreements, petitioned the energy commission to reconsider its draft license for the Skagit Project; that is, all parties wanted the commission to issue a license that contained all of the terms and agreements of the settlement offer intact. [23] On May 24, 1995, the energy commission, however, issued the license without reconsidering these pleas. Elizabeth Moler, commission chair, notified Seattle Mayor Norman Rice that the "Commission approved all provisions of the settlement." But there were minor stipulations with major significance to City Light and others. As Moler noted, the license would include
all provisions of the settlement that involve matters within the Commission's jurisdiction. The order accepting the settlement agreement also recognizes that certain aspects of the settlement are beyond the Commission's jurisdiction. The order supports the settlement and explicitly recognizes that the licensee may proceed under these provisions as private agreements among the parties. [24]
In June, the City of Seattle appealed the license order and requested a rehearing before the commission to resolve "numerous 'technical' problems and omissions in both the license and environmental assessment," and to have the commission provide an adequate explanation of "why certain parts of each of the settlement agreements were included as license conditions and others were not." This latter aspect of the city's complaint was especially baffling to the parties. The most detailed explanation they received, for example, was when the commission excluded elk habitat from the wildlife mitigation plan. The commission chair stated tersely that FERC was not "in the business of managing elk habitat." [25]
The energy commission granted the rehearing, and the following year, on June 26, 1996, the commission issued an order for the Skagit River Project's new license, which included "the measures at issue in the license, together with the terms needed to enable the Commission to enforce such measures." The commission maintained that the parties criticized it for not incorporating, word for word, "the language of every element of every Agreement, suggesting that failure to do so threatens the entire Agreement." This argument focused primarily on off-site mitigation, FERC noted, and tended to overshadow the commission's general "acceptance and implementation of the Settlement." In addition, the commission maintained, even with a settlement agreement, that it was part of its responsibility under the Federal Power Act to "frame license articles in the manner we deem sufficiently clear and concise to allow for effective oversight and enforcement." Nevertheless FERC decided to reconsider its position in order to settle the major issues surrounding wildlife and recreation agreements. These were namely
There were also a number of other issues surrounding fisheries agreements as well as miscellaneous articles, which the commission agreed to correct; many of these related to programs to be carried out in the park complex and involved clarifications and revisions to correct inadvertently omitted language. Throughout this process, the energy commission went on record stating that many of "the measures will constitute enhancement beyond that which we determine is required by the comprehensive development standard," and that the settlement agreements were binding between the parties even if they did not appear in the license itself. Nevertheless, for all intents and purposes, the commission restored the license to its original form as presented by City Light in 1991. [26] The relicensing process, furthermore, contributed to FERC's development of its alternative relicensing process.
With the relicensing of the Skagit Project, a new era was launched in the management of Ross Lake NRA. As Superintendent William Paleck noted earlier, he anticipated the settlement agreement to present the park with "a great challenge," for it would bring it into a closer working relationship with City Light, the Forest Service, North Cascades Conservation Council, and other intervenors. [27]
Part of that challenge also lay in carrying out the projects. How this would unfold remained to be seen. The Park Service had essentially contracted with City Light to undertake many of the projects since they would take place within the park complex. But it was no simple matter, for they would require staffing and organization. Jon Jarvis had argued for the Park Service's role in these projects, and attempted to have every project proposal developed with an overhead figure of some 10 to 15 percent, a figure lower than City Light would have had to pay a consulting firm. Moreover, the overhead should have been enough to hire a staff to do the projects -- or at the very least cover the costs of existing park staff. Yet in January 1995, the park complex reported a $200,000 shortfall to cover "additional new NPS operating/consultation responsibilities called for under the settlement agreements." [28]
At the same time, the agreement did not commit the agency to finish each project at a certain time but within a range of years. If the service then failed to complete the construction of a dock, for example, City Light could then let a contract. More important to remember, Jarvis recalled, was that the projects had to be specific in order to be approved, and that they were earmarked to further resource management and recreation in Ross Lake NRA. In this way, one could argue that they helped foster these programs for the recreation area specifically and the park complex generally. Already, North Cascades had gained the services of an archaeologist and a geologist as part of the relicensing investigations [29]; their work, as well as that of other professionals, would expand our understanding of the area's natural and cultural values and thus better enable managers to protect them. [30]
http://www.nps.gov/noca/adhi-11.htm