We’ve all seen it: the unrecognizable remains of some beautiful animal on the side of the road that happened to try and cross traffic at an inopportune time. Unfortunately, this sight is all too common for those living in Colorado – in 2016, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) reported nearly 7,000 wild animals killed by passing trucks and cars, resulting in two human fatalities and almost 400 injuries.

With the largest elk herd in North America and a rapidly expanding population, different agencies including the Colorado DOT, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) are coordinating to alleviate strains on migratory animals as well as animals residing near high speed corridors.

While determining how to practically solve this growing problem is complicated, recent coordinated action has provided direction. To this end, in June 2017, CDR spearheaded the design and facilitation of the Wildlife and Transportation Summit in Silverthorne, Colorado – a two-day multi-agency, interdisciplinary conference hosted by CDOT, CPW, and FHWA. The Summit established partnerships and developed recommendations to improve highway safety and protect wildlife populations.  Summit attendees included multiple state agencies, USFWS, the US Forest Service, legislators, the Nature Conservancy, private landowners, the freight industry, foundations, academia, and wildlife experts.

CDR focused on building momentum and finding common goals among policymakers, agency staff and public-private stakeholders to develop strategies and identify funding for wildlife crossings, mitigation work and herd migration.

The Summit focused on issues, including:

• wildlife migration and permeability
• animal-vehicle collisions
• highway safety
• highway mitigation features (fencing, overpasses, underpasses)
• partnership opportunities

What’s Next?

Summit recommendations were recently presented and discussed with the Transportation Environmental Resource Council (TERC), a Colorado inter-agency forum. CDR will be working with CDOT, CPW, and FHWA to facilitate and implement the Summit recommendations and develop an Action Plan beginning with a focus on the West Slope of Colorado beginning in early 2018.

Contact Taber Ward or Spencer Dodge for more information.

The verdict is in: The City of Boulder needs to change the culture of public engagement. After almost a year of research, discussion, deliberation and drafting, the Public Participation Work Group (PPWG) produced their Final Report – the report is currently on Boulder’s PPWG website and was approved  by the City Council.

Root problems identified by the PPWG include: lack of understanding of how public engagement and decision-making processes work and lack of consistent productive public conversations. As a result, this leads to frustration, anger and disruptive behavior, even for the “happiest City in the country.” The PPWG worked to support a fundamental shift in the way Boulder culture is played out by: 1) Changing the Culture of Public Engagement and 2) Utilizing a Comprehensive Decision-Making Process to enable community members to play the appropriate roles in partnership with the City of Boulder and key decision makers. The PPWG emphasized that this process will take time, require resources, and ought to be evaluated to measure improvements and modify accordingly.

In our last edition of CDR’s “Talking Points,” we provided a snapshot of the PPWG deliberations and the desire to re-vamp Boulder’s public engagement processes. Six months later, the PPWG’s Final Report provides five key problem statements and a road map to address these problems through a series of cultural shifts and decision-making process recommendations. The report is directed to everyone in Boulder – as the responsibility of good public participation is shared among community members, the City of Boulder Council, Staff, Boards and Commissions, decision-makers.

One of CDR’s strengths was highlighted during this process:  designing and implementing public-involvement processes to fit the specific community needs.  CDR facilitated the successful conclusion of this challenging and complex process by reaching agreement with the PPWG members and gaining approval from the Council.

For us, the PPWG process provides an opportunity to improve the community where we live and work.  Going beyond the mechanics of public involvement and focusing on the culture and principles of public participation can result in improved decision-making and stronger relationships.

For more information: Contact Taber Ward or Jonathan Bartsch

CDR facilitated the high-profile and challenging Broomfield Oil and Gas Comprehensive Plan Update Committee (Committee). A 14-person, citizen-committee, comprised of diverse and divergent perspectives regarding oil and gas, worked for over six months to develop a consensus agreement that was adopted by the Broomfield City Council.

Background

Oil and gas development has been important to Colorado for decades. As both Colorado’s population and the international demand for oil and gas have continued to climb, oil and gas development has encroached on urban and suburban areas, while cities and towns have sprawled towards historic oil and gas areas. Landowners are sometimes frustrated to learn about the state law that allows a “split estate.” Split estate means that surface property rights are the landowner’s rights to the surface of the land and mineral rights are property rights to the minerals beneath the surface of the land. These mineral rights can be “split off” from surface rights, meaning minerals beneath the land can be owned by a separate entity. Mineral rights include a mineral owner’s right to explore, mine and produce the rocks, minerals, oil, or natural gas below the surface of the property. This includes the right to enter upon the land and extract those minerals or receive royalty from the extraction of the minerals. In Colorado, the fact that surface and mineral rights for the same area of land may have different owners can result in disputes.

Update Committee

In response to public concerns and anger toward an oil and gas proposal that would site multi-well pads near residential areas (some sites included over 40 wells per pad), the City Council organized a transparent and citizen driven effort to develop regulations and guidance for oil and gas contract negotiations and memorandums of understanding (MOUs).

Broomfield convened a public forum at the 1^st Bank Center that attracted thousands of concerned community members (in-person and live streamed) and later formed the Update Committee that prioritized the health, safety, and welfare of the residents and environment of Broomfield, as part of the Comprehensive Plan.  The Committee members also recognized, as part of their charge, the need to allow mineral rights owners’ reasonable access to their mineral property. The Council charged the Committee with this technically complex and controversial task.

The Committee organized itself into four subcommittees: Health, Community Impacts, Planning, and Legal.  The Committee met at least two times a week for over six months. Numerous experts presented to the Committee on a range of topics to better inform the deliberations from air quality and noise standards to property values and state policy.

Consensus Agreement

CDR facilitated the Update Committee’s consensus agreement working through numerous contentious issues, framing the problems constructively and encouraging frank and creative problem solving. One of the essential elements of the effort was the strong technical, legal and policy support from the Broomfield staff.

The six-month facilitation resulted in comprehensive, strategic, and far reaching recommendations. Both the process and the substantive recommendations are seen to be a model for other communities facing similar challenges. These recommendations require state of the art technology and target regulation to mitigate, to the extent possible, negative impacts to the community and the environment.  Recommendations from the Update Committee include: Air Quality, Groundwater, Environmental Assessment, Oil and Gas Facility Siting, Application Process and Requirements, Pipelines, Setbacks, Traffic, Visual Screening, Insurance and Bonding, and Enforcement.

Click here to view City Council Resolution 2017-160 and the adopted Comprehensive Plan Update Chapter on Oil and Gas, adopted on September 26, 2017.

For more information contact: Jonathan Bartsch or Taber Ward

Taber is an attorney and facilitator with a focus on building partnerships, collaboration on transportation issues, regulatory design, and legal and policy analysis.   She has worked with a range of public and private agencies and organizations to solve problems, reach decisions and resolve conflicts.  Taber’s work includes convening stakeholder groups, consensus-building and working with agencies and non-profit boards to improve decision-making processes, increase understanding and rebuild trust. Taber is adept at working across and between sectors with social entrepreneurs, activists, government, non-profits, and business leaders.

Taber earned a law degree from the Colorado Law School in Boulder and practiced public health and natural resource law for the State of Colorado. She also founded Mountain Flower Goat Dairy, a non-profit urban agriculture project with a mission to train the next generation of farmers while providing humanely produced dairy products to the community.  Additionally, Taber has previously worked with Boards of Directors and Executives, run business development teams and facilitated government affairs and policy efforts.

Taber is an integral part of the future of CDR, currently working on a variety of challenging and exciting transportation, wildlife and public involvement efforts.

In her free time, Taber can be found mucking around with goats or on a hike in the Colorado mountains and walking her dog.

If you would like to know more, find Taber’s contact information here.

“If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done, You Always Get What You’ve Always Gotten”

– Henry Ford

In May 2016, the City of Boulder charged the 14-member Public Participation Working Group (PPWG) with recommending improvements to the city’s engagement process and public participation. The City’s goal was to engage citizens in the decisions made by civic leaders. Other cities initiating similar public participation processes include Austin, TX; Portland, OR; Berkeley, CA and Minneapolis, MN.

CDR’s Jonathan Bartsch, Principal, and Taber Ward, Project Manager, facilitate and support PPWG meetings to ensure that the PPWG receives the necessary resources to develop, refine, prioritize and present Public Participation Recommendations to the City Council by June 2017.

At the time of this publication, the PPWG members are well underway with discussions and research.  Initial topics addressed and discussed by the PPWG include, but are not limited to: increasing the City’s outreach efforts; inclusivity and diversity in voices; case-studies; best practices and public participation principles; education; skill-building and cultures; and systems of public participation.  A City Council representative and three staff members from the City’s Communications, Neighborhood Services and Planning departments also attend PPWG meetings to provide guidance and support.

CDR’s role is to facilitate and assist the PPWG in fulfilling its charge to provide applicable, actionable, and thoughtful Recommendations to increase public participation in Boulder.  The ultimate goal of this project is to ensure that citizens have an increased voice, a space, and a place to safely and respectfully contribute to the bigger conversation and process of Boulder governance.

If you would like to know more, find Taber’s contact information here.

CDR has worked extensively with the extractive industry sector. We are driven by the desire to ensure that the social and political leverage of a company is used to benefit those directly impacted by its operations, and that the strategies employed to achieve value and well being for communities also generate economic value for the company and reduces its social risks.

In 2014, the corporate social performance manager from a global oil and gas company approached CDR Associates to help them devise a social performance management system, consistent with international standards, that would enable business units across its global operations to comply with its revised community-relations policy, new community-relations standard and associated requirements and commitments. The company was interested in developing a systematic approach that tied its social performance strategy to business objectives; ensured social risks were assessed, managed and monitored throughout the life cycle of an asset; integrated social performance into its organizational culture and broader business processes; and increased the company’s ability to operate on schedule and within budget, contributing to a positive bottom line.

Over the past three years, Susan Wildau, a Partner at CDR Associates and another colleague, partnered with the corporate team to develop a global community relations management framework, standard, and implementation strategy. They also created practical tools, templates and guidance to support compliance at the asset level.

An important insight gained early in the process was the need to place ownership and accountability for the system squarely on the shoulders of the CEOs for the business units rather than with the community relations department. Moreover, a shift in company culture was called for, whereby social risk was viewed as everyone’s business, and community relations considerations had a regular place at the decision-making table.

Accordingly, CDR Associates, in partnership with the company, provided support in the following areas:
• Capacity building and coaching of the corporate social performance team in social performance management systems.
• Development of the social performance global framework.
• Preparation of the company’s social performance standard and alignment with associated standards and policies.
• Development of the company’s practice in social opportunities management, including its social opportunities procedure.
• Preparation of a full set of social performance management plans consistent with the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) performance standards, for use by the business units.
o Plans were developed in the areas of local content, closure, involuntary resettlement and land acquisition, conflict management, contractor management, community health, safety and security, stakeholder engagement, grievance mechanism, and so forth.
• Design and implementation of an interactive Social Performance Management Workshop and corresponding Train the Trainers course to introduce the social management system across the company’s global operations.
o Deliverables included program design, workshop agendas, all materials including case studies and simulations, and the Training for Trainers Guide.
• Co-delivery of workshop with corporate social performance team to targeted business units in various regions of company operations.
• Continued support of the corporate team and business units in their efforts to establish positive and constructive relations with local communities, civil society and authorities; reduce social risk; and enhance social performance tied to business objectives.

For more information on CDR’s experience and projects designing and implementing social performance management systems, grievance mechanisms, strategic community engagement, and conflict management for the extractives sector, including resolution of contentious company-community disputes, find Susan’s contact information here.