Agencies are significant allies to citizen groups and other participants in licensing proceedings. They have unique technical expertise in addition to their regulatory authorities. While you have standing to intervene and otherwise participate in any licensing proceeding, you should never view yourself as an island. You should try to persuade the agencies to use their respective authorities to further the public interest in a manner that includes your interest in the affected lands and waters. FERC must provide deference to their recommendations, and it must adopt their mandatory conditions, while it has more leeway with citizen groups.

To that end, you should establish a working relationship with the assigned agency staff. You should offer to help them as appropriate, by providing needed information, supporting their additional study requests to the licensee, and even co-drafting documents. By the time settlement negotiations start, or, when the agencies are drafting their final conditions for submittal in a disputed proceeding, the agencies hopefully will consider you as their ally or at least as a trusted source of information, and they will give weight to your recommendations. Bear in mind that, by law, any agency is required to give the same opportunities to other participants whose interests may be conflicting. Your power of persuasion turns on your trustworthiness.