ABSTRACT
One of the pleasures of doing the research on the New York City Watershed Collaboration was the opportunity to meet and speak with so many people working with enthusiasm, honor, and pride to meet their commitments to public service. The very nature of a collaboration meant that their diverse various commitments were not always compatible. The burden of historical resentment at the city’s taking of local land and the very fact of the city’s extraterritoriality add to the difficulties for this particular collaboration. However, over time, varieties of issues were worked out. This situation is not to be taken for granted. The generic human can become involved in quite vicious and unproductive conflicts. One must look to the framework of this collaboration for elements that allow and provide incentives for people to work out conflicts in cooperative ways. Accountability is one element that provides incentives for responsible and cooperative behavior. Accountability, which is differentiated from responsibility, has been usefully subdivided into financial, fairness and performance account ability (Behn, as cited in Callahan 2006: 18). Because the collaboration operates within the laws of the US, New York State and New York City, there are many forms of financial accountability. Because the water is monitored in many places and by different groups, there is strong performance accountability. Because the support of local communities for maintaining water quality is an expectation for granting the FAD, the city has in incentive to be fair to local communities. The city’s power of regulation, permission from the state to purchase land, and ability to afford financial inducements creates incentives for local communities to cooperate with the city. Many representatives from the communities in the collaboration are elected officials, and others are long time residents of the communities. Elected officials in the culture of local communities are expected to be responsive to the needs of the communities. These strong strands of accountability woven into the fabric of the collaboration give it strength, just as the diversity of concerns imprint it with interesting and instructive patterns of conflict. Two other elements of the framework contribute to the atmosphere of engagement that was observed. One is visibility. If the collaboration had been run out of offices in New York City, the water, the environment, and the communities of the watershed would have been remote and virtually invisible to those making decisions. One local health official reported having had to fight to convince the
city lawyers that some upstate water protection was already very good. Indeed, eventually the city entrusted the health department of Ulster County with oversight on septic permits (Palen 2006). Local implementation by the CWC, WAC, and local DEP Watershed Affairs Office means that, generally, the people who are engaged in solving problems are familiar with the landscape that is being discussed. Even if the discussants disagree on a policy, all have reason to care about the water and the land. The second element is the craft nature of the work. The work of protecting and developing the watershed and local communities is skilled work, the performance of which improves with experience. It is work with a direct relationship to other people and the land. It is work in which one can – and people do – take pride. One of the root reasons for the existence of collaborations is conflict. The following analysis of conflict in this collaboration is tripartite. First, the general nature of conflict and its resolution is discussed. Second, the collaboration is described as a conflict generating and solving machine, including a discussion of its tools for handling conflicts. Third, examples of particular conflicts that are typical or particularly important for the collaboration are presented and discussed.
