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Our State Senate Natural Resource Committee will be holding 

 hearings next month on the Russian River and other river systems 

 around the State, and they are attempting to develop legislation for 

 these other rivers using our planning process as a model. The State 

 and local agencies have expended over a million dollars in studies 

 and staff time for this plan. H.R. 4408 would make the Federal 

 Government a partner in this effort, and we urge your support of 

 this bill. 



At this time, I would also like to request to be able to put a num- 

 ber of the documents associated with our plan into the record. 

 Thank you. 



Mr. Hochbrueckner. We will be happy to accept the documents 

 and put them into the record. 



Ms. Marcus. Thank you. 



Mr. Hochbrueckner. Thank you and thank you for your testi- 

 mony, Ms. Marcus. 



[The statement and the documents of Ms. Marcus can be found 

 at the end of the hearing.] 



Mr. Hochbrueckner. At this point, on behalf of the Chair, I 

 have a question for each of you and we will just go down the line. 



The question is, restoration under this bill would be primarily a 

 bottom-up process where local citizens groups would submit propos- 

 als to the service for consideration. In your opinion, what are the 

 strengths and weaknesses of this type of approach? Ms. Beattie. 



Ms. Beattie. Mr. Chairman, we have discovered in our experi- 

 ence with programs of watershed or restoration and other pro- 

 grams generally regarding natural resources that local participa- 

 tion is essential, and so we see this grassroots, bottom-up approach 

 to the grant proposal process as a very strong point of the bill. 



Recent polling data has, I think, starkly shown that Americans 

 have largely given up on the effectiveness of their own personal 

 local actions for environmental improvement. And the one place we 

 have seen counteracting that is in many of the aquatic restoration 

 programs we have around the country right now where people ac- 

 tually get their hands in the water, actually prepare the grant pro- 

 posals, and see the restoration effects of their work. And it has 

 been very inspiring to see that, given that there is an air of cyni- 

 cism otherwise. 



So we see this as essential and one of the strongest fibers in this 

 bill. 



Mr. Hochbrueckner. Thank you. Mr. House. 



Mr. House. I think the people I work with recognize the need for 

 a national strategy and an overall plan for watershed restoration. 

 However, we also, any of us that have been working in this field 

 very long, recognize the need for a comprehensive plan, watershed 

 by watershed. 



And I would suggest that we need not so much the participation 

 of the locals in that sense, as much as the guidance of the locals. 

 Comprehensive planning has to be based on local observation over 

 the long term. 



I also need to remark that one of the weaknesses of this process 

 might be the focus on proposals on a project-by-project basis. A 

 mechanism needs to be developed so that there is support for a 

 planning process that goes on at the local level, which is not to say 



