Daytona Beach News-Journal Online -- News -
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Published on: 3/5/2006
Last Visited: 3/5/2006
Does it look like there might be some areas where we have interests in common?," began negotiator Brett Boston, pointing to a board on which he'd scrawled a list of topics: Aquatic habitat.Seagrass protection.Water quality.Springs protection.
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Boston is the president of Group Solutions Inc., a firm that untangles the knottiest issues imaginable -- before coming to Tallahassee last month, he was in Louisiana, drafting a plan among multiple industries and government agencies for flood control, coastal restoration and hurricane protection.
It's the type of negotiation that involves billions of dollars and hundreds of people.Which would seem, on the surface, a good deal harder than figuring out the needs of a slow-moving marine mammal.
Boston says it's not.The manatee forum's members "have been doing better, socially -- they're even starting to sit in different places around the table," he said, and they've been seen exchanging pleasantries over lunch."But they've been fighting for so long."
One question on Boston's agenda last month was this: Should manatees be downlisted from "endangered" to "threatened" under state law?
It was, upon further reflection, too incendiary a topic.There could be major civility relapses.At the last minute, Boston struck it from the agenda.