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. . generated at federal power facilities should be sold to preference customers. Upper Basin preference customers would not be able to purchase all power generated on the CRSP until the mid-1970's. If the power was to be marketed only in the Upper Basin, some of it would have to be sold to private utilities or it would simply go to waste. Lower Basin preference customers believed the preference concept should take priority over any other marketing plan, including one that limited preference purchases to the Upper Basin. The Lower Basin, then, had always claimed a share of the CRSP power, whether it was based upon projected load demand, firming deficient Hoover energy due to Glen Canyon Dam's construction, or because of the priority all preference customers should have in the purchase of federal power. The Allocation Process: Clarifying positions Faced with these contrasting claims on CRSP power, the USBR moved cautiously to determine the power marketing area. Congress had been critical of the Bureau's supposed lack of consultation with both private utilities and preference customers,/27 so the Bureau proposed several joint meetings with various --- representatives of the interested groups to talk about CRSP transmission plans. To begin discussion, the Bureau's Region 4 Office invited a representative group of investor-owned utilities and preference customers from states in both the Upper and Lower Basins to meet in Salt Lake City on July 10, 1959. Several plans relating to the technical features of the CRSP transmission system would then be offered for review and comment./28 The investor-owned utilities "green book plan" (October 1959} was a direct outcome of this meeting. This initial study showed no power allocation to Arizona, and a CRSP transmission system consisting primarily of 230 kilovolt lines (230 kV}. While the investor-owned utilities provided for adequate interconnection between the CRSP power plants and their planned coal-fired plant at Four Corners, New Mexico, the green book plan showed no transmission lines adequately connecting CRSP plants with Hoover and Parker-Davis Dams./29 Upper Basin preference customers did not advocate the transmission system put forward by the investor-owned utilities for several reasons. Their first concern was the wheeling charge the investor-owned utilities would levy on all CRSP power delivered over their transmission lines. Their second concern was that the investor-owned utilities would be able to purchase laroe amounts of surDlus CRSP power at rates less than 6 ~ills/kwh, thus ennangering the amount of monev available for proiect repay~ent. Finally, and perhaps most imDortantl~, the ~D?er Basin preference customers feared that the investor-owned u:~litles wouid be in an optimum positlon to somehow con~rol the ?o~er produced on the CRSP, a perspective ~hich fuelec the notion t~~t t~i5 ~3S 2 ~ublic power versus ?rivat~ ~ower contro':~rsy. 6