I had a good laugh today when HenryWallace questioned the veracity of my statement, "It is very exhilarating to be involved with shutting down multimillion dollar projects." Noting "that people sometimes sincerely mistake correlation for causation.", and opined "I would trust your sincere belief in anything that you posted and would never assume intentional deceit on your part."

          As HenryWallace was never (as far as I know) a student in any of my classes I can forgive the insult inherent in his words and ascribe no malice aforethought to to his query. I am however still laughing my ass off with respect to his choice of words (for edification check out "passive-aggressive" or "Visit Nebraska, Visit Nice" sigh, do they even know ‽). Ah!, but now for the serious stuff.

          Have any of you ever had the experience of crushing the dreams of a petty bureaucrat bent on environmental mayhem just because he wants to built a legacy project?

          In the mid 1970s a group of farmers formed the Save Our Land Organization (SOLO) and later collaborated with the newly created BBAS:

          1975 – Water projects that would have further drained vital flows needed by sandhill cranes, whooping cranes, and other migratory waterfowl were being proposed for the Platte River. Led by Audubon, the Midstate Project, the largest and most threatening of the proposed diversions, is defeated in a local referendum. This effort led directly to the formation of the Big Bend Audubon Society in Kearney, as well as chapters in Grand Island and Hastings.

          I showed up in 1979, ta da, and hit the ground running as I became a board member of BBAS and joined other volunteers doing restoration work on the recently created sanctuary 12 miles east of Kearney very near the "P" of Platte River.
          Soon after I arrived Ron Bishop the director of the Central Platte Natural Resources District started promoting a variation on the recently scuttled Midstate Project. It's price tag of $400,000,000 was in part responsible for some people becoming a bit concerned. The BBAS took a lead role once again as the threat to the riparian habitat in the Big Bend Reach of the Platte River due to this project would have been extreme.
          A decade earlier support the Midstate Project was stronger, but the developing crises in farm financing helped soften that support as more farmers were becoming skeptical of government projects. But Ronny had a plan. He and his staff developed several alternative versions of the project so that they were able to de-clarify the actual details presented at any one meeting.
          I was able to obtain a pamphlet with sketches that included water elevations for a set of reservoirs in one version of the project. I bought a set of USGS quadrangle maps covering the project area. Using trivial cartographic techniques, I indicated in readable detail one version of the project.
          At an open meeting in Amherst, NE I set up a display at the back of the Grange Hall. As the room filled with people, studiously ignoring me, I quietly waited for the inevitable explosion. As Ron entered from the inner sanctum behind the podium he spotted me in the back of the room and with an exaggerated Shakespearian gesture pointed toward me and shouted, "That man doesn't know what he is talking about, he know nothing!" Several of the locals then converged on my location to check out my lack of knowledge. I showed them the pamphlet with Ron's name on it, and they looked at the large maps I had prepared. One farmer, pointed at a spot on the map saying, in anger, "That's my farm!, Underwater?" Ron Bishop did not have a good evening that evening.

          Please understand that my contribution was a small bit mixed in with a very large campaign to inform the farmers in the area as to the truth of the project. We found out: The farmers on the hills to the north thought the farmers in the valley were getting a better deal as removing water from the river would allow them to farm more of the river bottom. The farmer in the valley thought the farmers on the hills were getting a better deal because they would be able to use the water to increase their yields on their "dry land" crops. Funny things happened when we got them talking together.
          As it became obvious that the project in its new incarnation was on the verge of collapse, the farmers were starting to talk like us liberal environmentalist, well almost.
          Ron hired a particularly well educated hydrologist to testify that by removing water up river from the project and accounting for the fact that all the removed water would only be able to return to the river via ground water routes, the Big Bend Reach of the Platte River would become a gaining stream. Further this rather well educated hydrologist doubled down by testifying that a gaining reach of stream was a good thing as that indicated the project could be counted as increasing its flow in the environmental impact documents and the EPA would like to see enhanced flows in this reach of the river. Think about that for a moment ... yep that's what he said.
          Most farmers still (three decades later) don't like us much. The exception to that rule: The farmers near the Sanctuary like us just fine, but that is a different story.