Return to Simulation Home
This assignment simplifies the actual presentation situation involving the arrangements for the dedication of the first public facilities restoration project in Eugene. Governor Barbara Roberts, truly interested in this project, was not able to attend. However, all the other information is factually correct except for the specific details of the team's presentation situation (names of those present, location, room, and so on).
By 1992, the West Eugene Special Area Study had been completed. The Wetlands Plan was approved by the City of Eugene and the US Bureau of Land Management. Now the first restoration site in west Eugene (at Bailey Hill Road and West 7th) has been readied for dedication on Memorial Day, 1994. Senator Mark Hatfield, a long-time supporter of conservation and environmentalism, will join local officals, including Eugene Mayor Ruth Bascomb, and Oregon's governor, Barbara Roberts, may attend. The governor has requested a briefing from your team, although it looks as though she will not be able to fit this event into her schedule. She is particularly insistent about keeping up on wetlands.
Back in 1987, business people were not the only ones that failed to foresee what happened. When the wetlands designation was announced, Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt was in Japan marketing this land along with other areas of Oregon for industrial development. The press was covering Goldschmidt's tour, and job-hungry Oregon citizens were watching closely. They wanted to see whether the governor's trip would be just one more political junket or a successful bid for more investment and more jobs. Goldschmidt, who knew nothing about the wetland problems in Eugene, was outraged that his staff had not kept up with the pending regulations and their impact on the property he was promoting. He believed that he would surely lose face over this lack of information. Japanese investors wondered whether their prospective investments would be worthless.
Eugene's wetlands problems are part of a much bigger national controversy over wetlands preservation, and wetlands policy is the scene of a political battle over the role of government in land development. As the Environmental Protection Agency and three other government agencies adopted a new wetlands manual with new definitions in 1989, estimates of the acres affected swelled to over 3,500 acres. The Bush administration's Council on Competitiveness, headed by Dan Quayle, attempted to overturn this new definition by proposing revisions to the manual that would have reduced the amount of protected wetlands nationally by perhaps fifty percent and in Oregon by as much as eighty percent. Bush, who had run for office promising to be "the environmental president," was in a difficult position. People who were given conflicting advice by different government agencies at different times had even more trouble.
(See any of the following: pages 4, 5, and 10 of The League of Women Voters, "Wetlands: The Land-Use Issue of the '90s," March 1992; "Wetlands block development," Oregonian, Jan. 7, 1990; "Bush plan: Relax wetlands policy," Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1990 WHERE IS NWS 33??; and "Under pressure, EPA eases wetlands stance," Chicago Tribune, May 9, 1990.)
According to Steve Gordon, a land-use planner for the Lane County Council of Governments, a lot of people were surprised: "We had the impression 'wetlands' meant swamps and bogs. Everybody knew West Eugene was gooey with boot sucking mud in winter. But it dries rock hard in summer. We were slow to realize we had significant wetlands." The inventory completed by a biologist working on Eugene's comprehensive plan identified about 735 acres as "wetlands." Between 1988 and 1991 the number of acres that would have been defined as wetlands fluctuated, sometimes being pegged as high as 1500 acres under some policies. The governor does not need a comprehensive review of these developments, but you may wish to tie some current issues in the dedication of this restored wetlands, which has been paid for by groups that developed other wetland sites, to this history or make some reference to the process.
This map shows the city of Eugene and the area that eventually was declared to have wetlands on it. The first task of municipal governments was to develop a plan to comply with the new regulations. Eugene's city council contracted with the Lane Council of Governments to conduct the project that would develop the plan. LCOG's urban planner Steve Gordon set out to engineer a Wetlands Plan that would accomplish dual goals: protection of the wetlands and incentives for economic development. Some of the success that followed in the five years flowed from Gordon's personality; although his beard and stocky build connoted authority, he had a gift for listening, patience, and empowering others. He built a team of engineers, planners, and financial experts from several city and county departments and from the Nature Conservancy, an environmental group dedicated to owning and preserving ecosystems. Gordon dubbed his group "The Wetheads." Says Eugene wetlands coordinator Deborah Evans, who worked with Gordon's group, "In looking at other models, [we saw that] things disintegrated into winners and losers. Because of that, we rejected the idea of a task force or a citizens advisory committee and instead involved as many citizens as possible." The governor's constituents have something to be proud of in their problem solving process that brought the Eastern Gateway as an initial restoration project.
The Wetheads' goal over the following four years was to build consensus through a series of workshops, meetings, field trips, mailings to property holders, and other educational community events. Everyone had to work together, Gordon believed. Bringing in the environmentalists was consistent with Gordon's inclusive strategy. "The Nature Conservancy played an important part in the process," Gordon says. "The Conservancy is very good at negotiating with private property owners. They brought that tool box to the planning group. They're scientifically sound and interested in the broader ecosystem. And then they brought in Ed Alverson in 1991 as stewardship ecologist in Eugene, so we had day-to-day contact with the Conservancy." The Nature Conservancy had leased acreage in the southeast corner of the West Eugene wetlands, a spot the Conservancy had identified as the best remaining piece of the Willamette Valley wet prairie, an important habitat for rare species that had been reduced to less than one percent of its original size. Later the City hired Alverson as a wetlands consultant, and the city of Eugene and the Nature Conservancy both pay Alverson's salary--which demonstrates the kind of cooperation that the Wetheads developed among the stakeholders. Catherine Macdonald, director of stewardship for the state-wide Oregon Nature Conservancy, comments: "Protecting biological diversity in an urban setting can involve complex land-use and engineering issues. By forming a partnership with the city of Eugene, we can take advantage of each other's expertise and resources."
By 1992, the WEWSAS had been completed. The Wetlands Plan (see preface) was approved by the City of Eugene and the US Bureau of Land Management. Now the first restoration site at Bailey Hill Road and West 7th Place in west Eugene has been readied for dedication on Memorial Day, 1994. Senator Mark O. Hatfield will join local officials and state governor Barbara Roberts. Mayor Ruth Bascom of Eugene is slated as master of ceremonies. A new sign has been erected marking the Eastern Gateway to the Restored Wetland. The 19-acre site is owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is under the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the mitigation and restoration project was organized by the City of Eugene Public Works Department. Companies and entities that will develop less valuable wetlands sites have paid for this project. The Mahlon Sweet Airport extended a runway, Bonneville Power Administration electrical project, a low income housing project, and a private commercial development project paid for 17 acres. The remaining two acres are expected to be paid for by the Oregon Department of Transportation. And with the grant received just this February from the Oregon Department of Transportation, Eugene will be constructing a $1.1 million bike trail that will go by this site. That's something the government can take some credit for--the state's contribution to this site and to people in Eugene.
You're one a solid team that assists the governor--your team consists of the director of the Eugene-Springfield Metro Partnership; the wetlands coordinator from the Department of Public Works, City of Eugene; the district manager of the Bureau of Land Management; and a member of the governor's staff. All will meet on Tuesday before the dedication to brief Governor Roberts in her office. The governor, who is well aware of the ongoing controversy with the EPA, and who served on the board of the State Department of Lands, needs to understand the fundamentals of the Eugene plan and the aspects that she can praise in her own remarks if she attends the ceremony or use in public remarks elsewhere even if she can't attend. The plan is emerging as a model for other parts of the country and the EPA has given Eugene a grant for disseminating information about its process to others . The most important points for your team's ten-minute briefing can be drawn from The West Eugene Wetlands Plan, its preface, and from the Nature Conservancy article, " All Wet in Oregon."
The trick to briefing someone, whether a governor or a business executive, is to link new information to old information. Because top executives in both business and government have to address a complex range of audiences, their staffs must be very good at seeing the implications of new developments and pass the information along tagged with comments about its relevance to past situations or concerns AND comments about how various stakeholders will be affected by these events or issues. You don't have to give lengthy tutorials, but you must both inform and interpret--give the data and show why it matters. Your team probably assigns different topics to individuals according to their expertise but coordinates the presentation so that the whole briefing is a coherent whole. For example, probably only one person on your team needs to know about the national wetlands controversy, something that certainly interests the governor. The timeline helps you see to what events you might link the accomplishment of the newly restored wetland.
Available to you in the communication case introduction: vicinity map linking Oregon, Eugene, and the wetlands area; a black and white map of the wetlands area in west Eugene, and a diagram of stakeholders.
Return to Simulation Home
Back
to Site Homepage