In 1971, a prominent citizen of Glens Falls, New York, sought to persuade municipal officials that the city needed a swimming pool in one of its parks, and suggested that the pool be built to commemorate a deceased friend.To demonstrate his dedication to the project, the wealthy promoter offered to raise half of the city's share of the construction costs from private sources. The city, responding to this incentive and to pressure from local contractors, drew up a proposal for pool construction that sought 50 percent funding from the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation of the Department of the Interior, the other half to be covered by local monies. A group of local citizens were not as convinced as the city fathers of the wisdom of the proposal. They contended that the swimming pool, parking lots, changing facilities, and related structures would alter the park's natural setting and create traffic flows, noise, and crowd management problems not in keeping with the character of the park. Some also objected to the burden that pool maintenance costs would place upon the city budget.

Although there were no local public hearings or other forums through which the citizens could effectively express their discontent, the lawyers for the citizens' group¹ discovered and utilized a little-known device for influencing federal aid applications that proved quite effective in halting the pool construction proposal. The device that the lawyers used is a procedure of the Office of Management and Budget that requires all applications for federal assistant under certain programs to be reviewed and commented upon by state and areawide "clearinghouses." The citizens' group filed alternative viewpoints with the state and areawide clearinghouses, contending that the pool proposal was inconsistent with the present nature of the park, contrary to land use plans for the area, a region with numerous lakes, and would create significant adverse environmental effects. The clearinghouse review process provided an unexpectedly valuable point of access to state and local decision making processes; direct and indirect pressure on the review-and-comment procedure resulted in withdrawal of the city's application and abandonment of the pool project.