Is Collaborative Decision Making Good for the Environment?

1. FHWA 2006 Environmental Conference Is Collaborative Decision Making Good for the Environment?

2. Presentation Supported By EPA Conflict Prevention and Resolution Services Contract EP-W-04-015, Task Order 036 Presented by: Andy Rowe GHK International

3. For more information about EPA CPRC please contact: William Hall Conflict Prevention and Resolution Center U.S. EPA (2388A) 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20460 202.564.0214 hall.william@epa.gov www.epa.gov/adr

4. SEEER Developers Andy Rowe Economist, GHK International William Hall Conflict Resolution Specialist, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Bonnie Colby Economist, The University of Arizona Mike Niemeyer ADR Coordinator, Oregon Department of Justice

5. SEEERSystematic Evaluation of Environmental and Economic Results Assesses the environmental and economic effects of environmental and resource decisions • Policy and site specific decisions • Attributes effects to the decision • Compares them to a reasonable alternative • Provides valid, reliable and credible results • Is feasible

6. Builds On Substantial Prior Work • Evaluation systems at federal and state ADR agencies • Previous work in the practitioner and researcher communities

7. Session Themes Primary Questions • Are collaborative decisions good for the environment? • Are collaborative decisions effective? Background first

8. SEEER Findings • About SEEER • Results of collaborative processes can be estimated despite complexity • Parties can provide valid and reliable judgments about the effects of collaborative processes • Effects of Environmental Decisions • Collaborative processes result in positive environmental outcomes • Collaborative processes are effective decision making processes

9. What Makes SEEER Significant? • First known systematic assessment of environmental effects of collaborative decisions • Most previous work focused on process elements and fidelity to best practice • Can be applied equally well to other forms of decision making • Other settings – e.g., Transportation • Other decision processes – e.g., rules, permits, cleanup

10. A Few Caveats • Judgments of effects are sound • Cases not yet representative of ECR practice • Small number of cases to date (9 completed, 3 underway, 13 in early phases) • Oregon and first group of EPA cases selected for methodological development utility • Potential bias favorable to collaborative processes

11. Key Drivers for SEEER • Outcomes do matter • Government is accountable for the work that it does: • The Government Performance and Results Act • OMB’s Program Assessment and Rating Tool • Potential users require evidence that collaborative decision making is an effective alternative

12. CEQ/OMBEnvironmental Conflict Resolution (ECR)Policy Memorandum (November 28, 2005) • Defines ECR as third-party assisted conflict resolution and collaborative problem solving in the context of environmental, public lands, or natural resources issues or conflicts, including matters related to energy, transportation, and land use. • Federal agencies are encouraged to draw on the services of a range internal and external resources in implementing the policy • OMB and CEQ will convene periodic leadership meetings to advance progress on the policy and other meetings for senior agency staff will be held quarterly • Major emphasis on demonstrating the value of ECR in environmental decision making

13. Key Drivers From ECR Practitioner Perspective • No longer good enough to take the effectiveness of ECR processes solely on faith. And many practitioners do have a strong faith in process based on our experience. • Practitioner experience is important, but must find ways to demonstrate outcomes that are credible to the people who provide the funding and address their key questions (accountability for results). • The key question for funders is “was this good for the parties and the environment, and was this at least as effective as a reasonable alternative?”

14. SEEER Cases

15. Oregon Cases Fish Passage Task Force (Policy) Marmot Bull Run Hydro Licensing Pelton Round Butte Hydro Licensing Mid Columbia Habitat Conservation Plan (not completed) Umatilla Basin Water Exchange Indian Ford Creek (Land Use / Conservation) EPA Cases CSO Control Policy (ongoing) GE Pittsfield Superfund Philadelphia Prisons Enforcement Washington Navy Yard Permitting Washington Aqueduct Permitting

16. Criteria For Inclusion in First Phase • For purposes of our study: • A negotiation among affected stakeholders about a set of environmental and/or natural resource issues • Assisted by a neutral third party for a least part of the time that the stakeholders interact • In which the stakeholders reached an agreement on how to address the issues • Agreement being implemented

17. Current Portfolio Being Assessed • Department of the Interior • Off road vehicle (ORV) use in Cape Cod and Fire Island National Seashores • Potential non-collaborative ORV case • EPA Superfund (hazardous waste cleanup) • 8 collaborative cases • 5 comparison non-collaborative cases

18. Judging Effects • SEEER has unique approach to alternatives • SEEER focuses on independent variables • SEEER judgments are time and location specific • SEEER triangulates key judgments • SEEER applies a single metric for all environmental effects • Full SEEER approach leads to credible, valid and reliable and feasible judgments

19. How do we compare to ? Collaborative Processes “X”

20. What Is The Alternative (The “Orange”)? • Selection of alternative emphasizes credibility to: • Parties and others knowledgeable about case and ECR • External stakeholders, including funders • Study identified 4 types of candidate (alternative) processes • Natural alternative – same or similar issue addressed with a different process • Constructed alternative – a process that might have been but was not • Party nominated alternative(s) (e.g., as with current ECR system) • Prior / concurrent process used by parties

21. SEEER Approach to Alternatives • A natural alternative requires a different decision in a similar setting involving similar interests and issues • An hypothetical / constructed alternative is a mental creation for the evaluation based on information from key interest interviews and secondary source and reviewed with selected key interests prior to use

22. Photo : Footbridge Over the Marmot Dam (PGE) Examples of Natural Alternatives • Off Road Vehicle Use in National Seashores • ORV use was closed in 1992 for the lower portion of the shore at Cape Cod National Seashore where the key issue was managing the effect of ORV on Piping Plover, a listed endangered species • We get the incremental effects comparing closed and open areas. The incremental difference is the key input to economic valuation (in this case in bird years) • Collaboratively decommissioning a hydro dam • Similar dam decommissioned in a similar setting with similar issues and affected interests and environmental effects, but through traditional FERC processes without collaboration

23. Cape Cod ORV Use – Constructed Alternative • “Please assume that the NPS would have enacted final regulations in 1996, after a public comment period on draft regulations. After subsequent litigation the amended regulations would have been enacted around 1999. The number of permits outside self-contained areas and the fees would have been about the same as they are today. The new regulations would have provided the NPS with some flexibility on routes and the then existing ORV corridor would have been changed to give more flexible access when Plover were nesting. Assume there would not have been funding for research and resource monitoring and the new regulations would not have provided for the subcommittee on ORV use, nor access to paved parking for night fishing or boat launching within the ORV corridor.”

24. Illustration of Party Nominated Alternatives • Constructed alternative – traditional FERC process, took 5 years longer, involved litigation and did not include transfers of benefits such as utility owned land and senior water rights • Oregon FERC Case A • The environmental groups selected a range of alternatives including traditional FERC process, working directly with the utility, working with a government agency other than FERC and litigation. • Businesses and federal agencies were split between working with the traditional FERC process and working directly with the utility • State and local government selected traditional FERC process, working directly with the utility and working with some other agency • Oregon FERC Case B • The environmental groups selected working with several agencies, within the FERC process and litigation • State agencies would work with the utility, with another government agency other than FERC, the state HART process and the traditional FERC process.

25. Obtaining Best and Credible Judgments

26. Full SEEER Method Triangulates • 3 independent judgments each from different knowledge and information bases • Each group uses the same metric (probability and magnitude of independent variables in specified landscape and for 10 and 60 year periods) • Each group serves a unique function: • Panel – highest level of validity, external credibility, least knowledgeable of decision • Advisors – getting science right, external validity assessment • Parties (Planners and implementers) – internal credibility, best informed on decision, lowest level of external credibility

27. Gain key case information (effects, alternative, …) Triangulate Effect judgments Validation Parties (planning & implementation) Science advisors and study team using secondary data and sources Secondary sources Key party interviews Science advisors Advice from science advisors Science panel Information Sources for Full SEEER Method Judgments of Effects Select cases

28. Cases Where Full SEEER Method Not Used • Method enhanced prior to CSO, Superfund and DOI cases • Oregon cases • Oregon Fish Passage Task Force (policy approach not then developed) • Indian Ford Creek (different science base so limited panel) • EPA Cases • Full SEEER only on CSO and potentially GE Pittsfield • Environmental effects not as much in play as environmental management issues, additional costs not justified

29. SEEER Focuses on Direct Actions • Environmental decisions almost always focus on direct actions (independent variables) • Salmon enhancement programs address habitat, passage, enforcement leading to more salmon • Clean Water Act permits limit discharges leading to cleaner or less polluted waters • Riparian buffers absorb nutrients and reduce sediment discharge leading to lower nutrient levels and clear water leading to reduction in oxygen • Evaluation judgments can often only be made about independent variables • Scientists are reluctant to estimate effects on dependent variables compared to independent variables • Dependent variables are the impacts resulting from changes in the independent variables

30. Which Salmon Are Attributed to the Decision? The rest of my family would be here but they got netted off Greenland I’m here because they improved water flow and a big guy like me can now get through the shallows I’m not here because of global warming I’m here because they took out the Marmot dam

31. Measuring Effects • Importance tells us the relative ranking of an effect • E.g. adding a scenic view in an already splendid high mountain meadow is not as important as conserving the meadowlands for wildlife and stream critters • Probability tells us the likelihood of an effect occurring • E.g. increasing water flow in the autumn is important, but there is no way this decision is going to lead to that • Magnitude tells us the extent of an effect • E.g. removing the Little Sandy dam will open up 2 miles of salmonid habitat above the dam to steelhead trout • Probability and magnitude vary across time • Using 10 years (short term) and 60 years (long term)

32. Environmental Index = (likelihood of effect occurring X expected magnitude of the effect) / maximum possible score

33. Oregon CasesPositive Environmental Gains in Collaborative Cases

34. EPA Water CasesIncremental Gains With Collaborative

36. Collective Judgments Of Parties Are Valid And Reliable With Good Information & All Interests Represented • Triangulated judgments of environmental effects from Oregon cases using parties, a science panel and science advisors • Party judgments were reliable – Cronbach’s Alpha 0.973 to 0.986 (>0.8 considered reliable) • Party judgments were valid – correlation coefficients significant at 0.01 level • Party judgments not valid on cases where hypothesis conditions were not met • Response rates 75% (Oregon), 88% (EPA water) • External validity tested only on Oregon fish and water cases to date • Apply environmental index to the base count of fish • Result was within the upper and lower limits of fish counts and independent science estimates for the cases

37. Collaborative Decision Making Improves Information Sharing

38. Evaluating Environmental Policy Decisions • SEEER methodology appears to work well for policy cases as well as site specific cases, with adjustment. • e.g., Combined Sewer Overflow Policy based on a collaborative agreement leading to an amendment of the Clean Water Act • The main difference between a site specific and policy case is a spatial and temporal separation of the planning and implementation functions. • SEEER is testing a second sample from implementing municipalities with active local chapters/branches of key environmental organizations

39. Judging EffectivenessBenefits (What We Got) and Costs (What it Took) So, was the decision good for you too?

40. ECONOMIC VALUATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS • Likely positive and significant given positive environmental effects • Constraint is access to credible quantity estimates for environmental effect • Example: valuing incremental increase in fish numbers

41. Benefit Transfer Valuations For 2 Oregon Cases

42. Valuations for National Park Service Off Road Vehicle Use • Effect on endangered species • Additional bird years • Recreational use • Valuations of improved access for ORV users and other Park users • Park management • Estimates of the number of days spent on ORV issues before and after the decision (time sheets and survey) • Assessment of the level of harmony in Park – user dealings before and after the decision and of any spill over effects to other dealings

43. Other Economic Effects • Effect on organizational effectiveness • Greater harmony with other parties on this decision reduces costs of implementation • Social capital contributes to more effective decision making • Public image and morale contribute to overall effectiveness • Financial statement effects • Changes in the assets, liabilities, costs and revenues of parties • Other benefits • e.g. precedents, improved effectiveness of environmental management

44. Social Capital Benefits Vary By Interest Group

45. LESS TIME TO REACH AND IMPLEMENT A DECISION

46. DIRECT COSTS TO REACH A DECISION CAN BE HIGHER • GE Pittsfield • Substantial savings in attorney fees to GE and state and federal agencies • Higher EPA contributions for remediation • Washington Navy Yard • Some shift in cost burden between federal agencies • Direct costs of facilitation about $22,000 • Philadelphia Prisons • SEP (Supplemental Environmental Project) is a significant added benefit that required extra time • Agreement applied as model to approximately 10 follow on cases each with significantly reduced costs

47. Effectiveness • Input costs lower • Savings from reaching agreement sooner = approximately 0.5 to 1.5 PY ($33,000 to $134,000 per case) • Additional savings in process costs collected from ECR evaluation system (will be included in future effects cases) • Benefits • Enhanced environmental effects – about 25% better • Gains in environmental management – 35 - 50% better for EPA and Oregon cases respectively • Gains in organizational effectiveness through significant improvement in social capital, morale, public image and more harmonious post-agreement relations • More durable agreements = less likely to incur significant future expenditures

48. Conclusion • When used appropriately collaborative decision making: • Leads to additional environmental gains • Is an effective decision making process • SEEER Methodology • Leads to valid and reliable judgments about effects • Is feasible • What are our next steps? • EPA (CPRC) is sharing the technique and results with other Federal agencies • Implement SEEER for Superfund cases • Implement SEEER for DOI cases