 | Topics: Environment Fishbowl Planning on the Snoqualmie River
An Early Case Environmental Dispute Settlement Case study plus prepared by Carmen Sirianni, a member of the CPN Editorial Team. An ambitious model of citizen participation known as "fishbowl planning," developed by the Army Corps of Engineers in the early 1970s, gives some indication of how various techniques can be innovatively combined to democratize a process hitherto dominated by bureaucratic interests in massive civil works construction and economic interests in development at the expense of environmental preservation. While fishbowl planning on the Snoqualmie fell just short of a final settlement, it did establish the preconditions for the first successful case of alternative dispute resolution in the environmental arena. Case study plus. A damaging flood in 1959 on several rivers an hour outside of the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area had helped mobilize political support in Washington, D.C. for the Corps to build a dam on the middle fork of the Snoqualmie, and two small public hearings during the 1960s dominated by proponents lent their support to a Corps plan. Later in the decade, however, environmentalists in the metropolitan area had mobilized, and at a heavily attended 1970 hearing they voiced strong disapproval. They argued that a dam would lead to the kind of suburban development that would destroy the greenbelt character of the basin and end the free flowing river, and thus limit the appeal of the area as semi-wilderness for hikers, canoers and the like. These arguments were simply dismissed by the Corps, but environmental opposition prompted a study by the state Department of Ecology, which recommended against the dam, and the governor sent the issue back to the Corps to try to accomodate various perspectives. In response, the district engineer of the Seattle District of the Corps instituted fishbowl planning "to insure that planning for public-works projects is highly visible to all interested organizations and citizens." Four procedural components were at the core of a process that contained some fifteen types of public involvement activities. The first was a series of public meetings where individual citizens, organizations and agencies could develop and discuss alternative solutions for the problems of flooding, economic development and wilderness protection. The second was a series of five mini-workshops between the larger meetings that were convened voluntarily by various organizations, such as the Sierra Club and the valley farmers, wherein they developed a series of alternative plans and utilized the official study team as consultants rather than as agenda setters. The Sierra Club itself generated three different alternatives, and other conservationists and recreationists generated others, as did those most interested in flood control and economic development of the valley. The Department of Ecology convened a sixth mini-workshop to review the legislative aspects of each of the alternatives. Corps personnel themselves played a largely procedural and facilitative role throughout. The third component was a citizens committee composed of community and organization leaders whose role was to inform and mobilize citizens for meetings, workshops and other activities. The last and perhaps most innovative of the major components was a study brochure that was continually modified and updated to include all proposed alternatives generated at the public meetings and workshops. Each alternative proposal was summarized on one page, with pro and con arguments following, and names and addresses of supporting and opposing relevant organizations listed for direct discussion and coalition building. The final study brochure evolved over six or so previously circulated and debated brochures to include eleven alternative plans. Initially the Seattle District and the Washington State Department of Ecology had selected four alternative plans for discussion, but the Puget Sound League of Women Voters convinced them to open up the process beyond even this relatively broad set of choices. The final public meeting, three years after the first confrontation, did not produce a consensus, or even a set of alternatives favored by the study team, partly due to its perceived need for a little more time. The team's final report to the governor, however, indicated an emerging compromise, and he accepted an offer by the Community Crisis Intervention Center of St. Louis to mediate the dispute. Under deadlines imposed by the governor, ten representatives of the various consituuencies met with a mediator, who was being funded by the Ford Foundation to extend innovative community dispute resolution techniques from urban and inner-city neighborhoods to the environmental arena. The mediation built directly upon the trust, information, and networks that had emerged in the fishbowl process. Environmentalists were persuaded that valley farmers had no desire to sell their land to developers, and that they themselves would be held politically responsible for the damage of subsequent floods if protective measures were not put in place. This might jeoparde the movement throughout the state, undermine public support for other worthy conservation projects, and perhaps even lead to a dam with no land-use restrictions. Farmers came to realize more fully that continued development would spoil the rural way of life they cherished. But they also came to recognize the need to constrain those among them who might be tempted by the opportunity of windfall profits—a contentious point of local civic virtue that had emerged publicly in the ranks of area residents only at the last fishbowl meeting, when a long-time resident revealed that others were secretly planning to sell to developers. The final plan included a smaller dam on the north fork, a system of levees and set-backs on the middle fork, the local and state government purchase of development rights to ensure continued rural status, and the creation of a river basin planning council. It was agreed upon by the major protagonists, including the Sierra Club, valley farmers, the League of Women Voters, basin communities and the Washington Environmental Council. This mediation proved to be the first success in the environmental arena, and thus spurred diffusion through the Ford Foundation and other national groups, and led to the establishment of a mediation center at the University of Washington. And fishbowl planning techniques became institutionalized throughout the Seattle District of the Corps, and prepared the way for the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution in the Corps, which continues up to the present day. References Daniel Mazmanian and Jeanne Nienaber, "Fishbowl Planning: Environmental Planning, Economic Developemnt, and Democratic Technique," in Frank Fischer and Carmen Sirianni, Critical Studies in Organization and Bureaucracy, revised edition, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994, 601-22; this case is part of a larger study in Can Organizations Change? Environmental Protection, Citizen Participation and the Corps of Engineers (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1979), chap. 6. Colonel Howard Sargent, "Fishbowl Planning Immerses Pacific Northwest Citizens in Corps Project," Civil Engineering 42 (September 1972), 54-57, whose experience grew out of a previous Pentagon project. Gerald Cormick and Jane McCarthy, Environmental Mediation: A First Dispute (Seattle: Office of Environmental Mediation, 1974). Lawrence Bacow and Michael Wheeler, Environmental Dispute Resolution (New York: Plenum, 1984). Gail Bingham, Resolving Environmental Disputes: A Decade of Experience (Washington, D.C.: the Conservation Foundation, 1986). More Information An Organizational Assessment of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in regard to Public Involvement Practices and Challenges: an extensive, 150-page assessment conducted by Stuart Langton in January 1994. Includes executive summary and recommendations, 3 long case studies, an historical profile, and bibliography. Return to Environmental Index |
