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1993 generous calculations only rated .97 to L In the mid-1970s, the Bureau and the Southwestern Water Conservancy District con- vened a series of meetings in Durango to make A-LP more economic. Their solution, and the current plan, was an off-stream reservoir in Ridges Basin, a broad, scooped-out valley just southwest of and 500 feet above Durango. The system requires three pumping stations. The first two stages will lift 195,000 acre-feet of Animas River water the 500 feet to Ridges Basin Reservoir, and then another 400 feet up and over the ridgeline to the fann- lands of the La Plata Basin. There, a final set of pumps win pressurize the system for sprinkler irri- gation, with long pipes spreading across the basin's high, windswept mesas. That solution creat- ed new problems back in Durango. Ridges Basin Reservoir is downstream of town and on the wrong side of the valley, so the agency will have to build another set of pipes and pumps to get the town's share of water into its municipal reser- voir. That's not all. There is another reservoir an~ pumping station on the lower La Plata River to help the Southern Utes develop their coal reserves; and elaborate plans for water exhanges that allow Farmington, Aztec and Bloomfield, N .M., to draw water from the project. The sprawling collection of pipes, pumps and reservoirs, says Decker, is possibly one of the most inefficient BuRec projects ever designed. Many agree. "We are buying a project that will make Rube Goldberg look like he did his training at MIT. It will make Reddy Kilowatt do cartwheels in celebration of all the electric- ity' this project will consume," said Rep, George Miller, D-Calif., the current head of the House Inierior Committee, in a 1988 speech on the House floor. The new design is worse, not better, than the original plan, say opponents. Testimony from a recent BuRec report to the Office of Management and Budget - released because of a Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund Freedom of Information Act lawsuit - shows that costs have risen to $640 million, while benefits have dropped to 60 cents for every dollar invested. Project opponents warn, given the delays and the Bureau's histoI)' of underestimating project costs, that the final price tag will likely exceed $1 billion. Once in operation, it will take over 160 million kilowatt-hours of eleCtricity a year to keep the pumps running. In testimony to OMB, the Bureau said that ris- ing power costs - which will account for 41 to 46 percent of oper- ation and maintenance costs - could make A- LP so expensive that the federal government would have to subsidize its annual operations, or shut it down. The problems go on. The federal subsidy to irrigation lands exceeds $7,()(X) an acre, making it one <if the most expensive agricul- tural projects in U.S. history. And because most of the land sits at 7,000 feet, the short growing season will limit farmers to growing alfalfa, which is already plentiful in the Four Corners region. "However you slice it, it's an economical- ly senseless project," says Drew Caputo, "par- ticularly in a time of huge federal deficits arid a stubborn recession," Buoyed by recent successes, the growing opposition movement is pinpointing other problems as fast as it can. A-LP, they say, would cause terrible water quality and salinity problems in both the Animas and La Plata rivers; destroy a $3 million rafting industry based in Durango; steal water from New Mexico farmers who live downstream on the Animas River; dewater hundreds of acres of wetlands; and eliminate the last viable winter range for Durango's famous elk herds. Finally, Frank E. "Sam" Maynes Miles Davies "I'm surprised that the SOuthern Ute tribe hasn't ordered its attorneys to figure out how to sue the Sierra Club for violating their civil rights~ -Attaney Sam Maynes C 1996 High COUhtryNews - 19