Trainer says preservation of valley’s best features is possible

Telling stories can help people create the communities they want

John Parr, co-founder of the Center for Regional and Neighborhood Action in Denver, has been called one of the most successful collaborative trainers in America. Last week WwRAP, The Big Wood River and Little Wood River Action Plan group, hosted Parr in an informational forum, "Crossroads 2000—Creating a Community’s Future"--to assist people in designing and implementing a plan to deal with growth and preserve quality of life in the Wood River Valley.

By KEVIN WISER
Express Staff Writer

m10wrapar.jpg (8877 bytes) Community planner, John Parr, discusses strategy to deal with future growth and development in the Wood River Valley.

March 10, 2019--The sky over the Wood River Valley isn’t blue anymore. Visibility is less than three miles.

Water is undrinkable. The contaminated aquifer has been damaged beyond repair.

Suburban sprawl along Highway 75 is unbroken from the southern border of the county to the base of Galena Summit.

With the Hillside Ordinance long abandoned, development has crept up mountainsides and into canyons throughout the valley.

Loss of habitat has dramatically reduced elk and mule deer herds. Predators have been hunted nearly to extinction in the area. Attempts to reintroduce rainbow trout into the Big Wood River have failed due to high levels of pollution.

The commute from Ketchum to Hailey takes two hours.

The valley’s population in the Wood River Valley has quadrupled and numbers 80,000.

March 10, 1999--What do you want for the future of the Wood River Valley five, ten, twenty years down the road? What are the issues you think are critical?

Are you concerned about the quality of the air and the cleanliness of the water? Do you value the view when you drive your car down Highway 75 or when you walk your dog in the neighborhood where you live?

Can you put a price on these things, the quality of life you enjoy in this valley? Do you really care? And if you do, what would you do to preserve it?

In a presentation before Blaine County public officials and residents, Parr asked people what issues they think are critical in dealing with growth in the valley. Those in attendance listed public transportation, increased traffic, maintaining economic diversity, preserving rural character, affordable health care, population growth, and the preservation of open space and environmental quality.

Parr asked why they think those issues aren’t being dealt with properly. The group pointed to lack of integration and cooperation between cities, lack of public involvement and continued apathy by residents of the community.

Parr responded by saying that many mountain resort communities in the West dealing with growth and development are experiencing what he called ‘Urban Denial’.

"Until there’s a crisis people don’t worry--they’re not moved to act," he said.

When asked how to get a disconnected public to become involved, Parr said it’s often hard to make people admit there is a crisis. However, he said that can be accomplished by the use of scenarios--coming up with a handful of stories, data and trends of today and running them out 20 years as if they were newspaper stories written in 2020.

According to Parr, that would give people a sense of what’s going to happen in the future—good and bad, if we don’t control growth and if we do—and how the Wood River Valley will look in 20 years and what the quality of life will be.

This will help people realize the critical decisions that need to be made to avoid the worst-case scenario and make possible the best-case scenario.

The other solution, Parr said, is to let things get worse, until people finally admit there is a problem and that something must be done.

March 10, 2019 was an example of a worst-case future scenario. Perhaps it could never get that bad. Maybe it could get worse.

I grew up in Ogden, Utah. In 20 short years I saw fields and meadows paved over with parking lots, woods bulldozed, cut down and replaced with sprawling subdivisions. I saw the foothills along the Wasatch Front tiered with rows of houses and the mountainsides skewered by the climbing sprawl of condos and estates.

I saw the air turn gray and lakes become polluted. I saw rivers re-routed and altered to the point that they became nothing more than man-made ditches. I watched stream beds go dry, diverted in the name of progress to accommodate downstream development.

Residents may not believe it now, but the same thing could happen here. Maybe it’s already happening.

During the forum, Parr referred to case studies of resort areas in Colorado similar to the Wood River Valley in which the Center for Regional and Neighborhood Action assisted communities in dealing with future growth and development.

According to Parr, the work of the CRNA is not based on theories, but on lessons learned in communities that realized their futures were dependent on business leaders, elected and appointed officials and community activists finding ways to agree on key issues. Once agreeing, Parr said, these communities took action. Throughout the forum, Parr stressed the importance of public involvement in this process.

Parr described Metro Vision 2020, a regional development plan for the Denver area. The plan was adopted by jurisdictions in the area. It includes the following elements:

Growth Boundary, to decrease the amount of land consumed.
Activity Centers, to improve the economic health of each community.
Multi-modal Transportation System, to give people choices other than driving their cars.
Open Space, to preserve critical parcels, help farmers and ranchers survive and keep communities from running together.

According to Parr, the implementation of this plan is being carried out by actions taken by all parties involved that are voluntary, flexible, collaborative and effective.

Ingredients for success in programs such as this include regional collaboration and cooperation, alternative institutions, high quality information and education, citizen involvement and strong leadership.

In the forum, Parr identified the following as keys to successful collaboration:

Good timing and clear need—informing the community of existing critical issues and the need to act now.
Strong stakeholder groups—creating teams of people from all parts of the community to work on issues, to sort out challenges and options.
Broad-based involvement—encouraging people to come together from different groups representing both sides of the issue--different perspectives in the valley talking together.
Overcoming mistrust and skepticism—focus on shared values, what both sides care about even though approaches to problems and issues may be different.

March 10, 2019—With the creation of the Future Wood River Valley Action Group in the year 2000—the community as a whole came together, set aside differences and focused energy on the common goal of preserving quality of life in the Wood River Valley.

Creative land management tools including transfer of density rights and conservation easement programs allowed the valley to grow and maintain its rural character to some extent.

The Wood River Valley is not the same as it was 20 years ago nor will it be 20 years from now.

But the sky is blue, and the stars are magnificent at night. The mountains are still here, relatively untouched. You can walk your dog and take in the view and consider yourself lucky to live here.