CASE STUDY
Santa Clara Valley Water District: The Natural Flood Protection Project

Sara Duckler, Senior Engineer:
"Over the next decade, our agency will spend over two hundred million dollars to provide much-needed flood protection in the extensive floodplain of the Silicon Valley. Threatened and endemic species occupy the riparian corridors that will be touched by these projects. Additionally, the communities that we serve have become increasingly educated and articulate regarding environmental stewardship and community amenities, such as recreation and aesthetics. Clear and consistent guidance will be vital to the continued protection of these unique natural, social, and economic assets.

"For the sake of simplicity, we called public works projects that would protect each of these assets "Natural Flood Protection." A planning and decision-making framework was required to clearly describe and evaluate the desired functions and features of such projects.

"In response to this need, I carefully selected a large, interdisciplinary team that included technical staff from numerous departments within our organization as well as representatives from outside agencies and public stakeholder groups. Our task was to develop defensible, technical, and measurable criteria for incorporating multiple objectives into future multi-million dollar public works projects. Because of the complexity of the technical information, and the complicated relationships among the organizations and individuals participating, I knew I needed outside help.

"New Line staff did a superb job facilitating a highly effective process that allowed me to solicit and distill the knowledge and experience of a very diverse group of participants, many of whom had never before worked together. I initially encountered apprehension for hiring facilitators who were not expert in our complex local regulatory and environmental issues. However, my professional judgment was borne out: as astute, neutral facilitators, New Line staff allowed the ideas of the group to be expressed, received, and processed without influencing them. Indeed, I found that our success far exceeded the initial expectations of my team in terms of effective use of their time and ability to accomplish an impressive amount of work as a group. New Line staff were catalysts, allowing me to keep the team technically focused without jeopardizing my professional relationships with any of them. The technical guidance my team produced has since been enthusiastically embraced at all levels of the organization and formally accepted by our CEO as his interpretation of Board policy. Most importantly, staff have begun incorporating this guidance directly into their projects. This is the best indicator of buy-in I could have hoped for."