Public hatchery facilities increasingly respond to recreational fishing demands for larger catchable salmonids and to production programs that require a variety of species. The result of this tendency is to require more complexity in hatchery design and operations involving the simultaneous rearing of several species that results in overlapping production schedules for crops of fish that carryover from 1 year to the next. This paper presents a highly accessible spreadsheet based computer simulation model for use by culturists, designers, and program planners in designing hatchery facilities with these expanded program demands. It addresses trade offs between budget constraints, stocking objectives, available water resources, and production technologies. The model is structured so that all the assumptions for any facility program simulation can be entered on a single spreadsheet. The essential fish growth, density, flow, and feeding relationships used within the model are those based on widely used paradigms developed by Piper et al. (1982) and others. The program information assumptions include all of the essential information to simulate production runs for each group of fish within the facility, each with specific characteristics such as growth rate, feed conversion, calendar day stocking and harvest dates, and duration of the crop. Those program assumptions are linked to a series of other spreadsheets within the spreadsheet workbook that calculate weekly model simulation results for rearing space, first-pass and rearing flows, feed consumption, and phosphorus discharge for each group of fish and then for the combined results of the entire facility. The facility simulation results are automatically plotted in a graphic format for comparative evaluation of any series of production program assumptions that the operators consider in the design process. The graphic results for simulated rearing space, flow, and feeding are presented in an annual format in weekly increments. The graphic results readily present the utilization of facility space and water resources and clearly indicate opportunities to improve facility efficiency in a new simulation providing a rapid means of iterating design changes until the exercise generates the most favorable facility. Several case studies provide examples of this process for the user.

Rural governance in the UK and elsewhere has undergone far-reaching changes, as partnerships and other collaborative approaches have emerged to address the challenges of rural sustainable development. The legitimacy of this 'new rural governance' is purportedly grounded in deliberation between stakeholders, but this is problematic-it is not clear how 'legitimacy' is to be understood now that the criteria of legitimacy appropriate to representative democratic government are not obviously applicable.Here we propose an analysis of legitimacy as situated-that is, given meanings by actors in specific contexts-and continuously constructed through discursive processes, where it also plays a reciprocal, highly political role in shaping those processes. We use this framework to analyse decision making in three distinctive deliberative arenas for sustainable transport policy making in the Peak District National Park in England. Legitimacy claims were found to be significant elements in each arena, but no single, overriding legitimacy discourse was successfully established. Instead, each arena's legitimacy was a hybrid, justified through a complex mix of competing rationales.While no single conclusion can be drawn about the legitimacy of 'the new rural governance', the strongest legitimising principles remained those grounded in representative democracy. In contrast, the 'new' approaches rely on deliberative norms accepted only by (some of) the relatively limited circle of stakeholders directly involved. More generally, if such norms are to become accepted principles for legitimate rural governance, then more work is needed to discursively establish their acceptability both in networks of governance and with the wider population. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.