The devil, it turns out, is in the details.
Friends of the Bear, we’ve got story that stings. If you’re one of the 111 citizens who submitted a protest to the hidden effort of Pacificorp to transfer water rights in prep for it’s dam(n), you’ll know that it doesn’t just sting.
It also really sucks.
This week, we were told by the Idaho Department of Water Resources that, due to an archaic statute, all but 2 letters were accepted.
109 have been rejected, including ours, because we didn’t mail in a $25 cashiers check.
It was already a miracle we learned about the effort & deadline, but so far as we can tell, it would have taken a miracle to unwrap the procedural hurdles required for this public process to actually be public.
In advocacy, there are wins & losses.
Sadly, there are also loopholes.
We’ve spent days feeling the weight of this statutory shit storm of underwhelming news.
How could we have known?
Why didn’t we dig even deeper?
Why didn’t anyone tell us that a voice only matters when the check clears.
The truth is, we did our best because we are all just winging it in the face of infinitely resourced legal engines.
What matters is that we tried. There is a public record that 109 official comments were ignored on a technicality.
A painful lesson and one we can’t repeat.
Within our team, we have a a high tolerance for failure. But it comes with a request, that we each OWN OUR MISTAKES. That we confidently examine the fail in broad daylight.
That we share what we learn, celebrate that we tried, and deploy the lessons for down the road.
So what’s the lesson? That we need help. Not just with petitions & emails, but with legal expertise, community organizing & grassroots leadership.
We need you. In the aftermath of this micro bureaucratic blundering designed to prevent everyday citizens from speaking up, we’re formally developing our Friends of the Narrows Advocacy Board to ensure that no devilish details get in our way moving forward.
If you are an attorney, experienced organizer, or water rights nerd, pop over to our profile link and fill out the Narrows contact form.
The dam(n) isn’t yet dead. It’s delayed. And we need help.