WSP09123

• File Number: 8220.106
• Description: Animas-La Plata
• State: CO
• Basin: San Juan/Dolores
• Water Division: 7
• Date: 5/7/1992
• Title: Agenda Item 9b Matter in Litigation Four Corners Action Coalition v. Underwood
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Board Memo

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STATE OF COLORI\DC
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COLORADO WATER CONSERVATION BOARD
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April 23, 1992

Rov Rompf
Governor

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Dennis Underwood
Commissioner of Reclamation
18th and C Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20240

Re: Animas-La Plata

Dear Dennis:

I am writing you on behalf of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. After years
of a prosperous and relatively peaceful pannership between the Bureau of Reclamatic:n and
the State of Colorado it is dismaying to contemplate the Bureau's proposals in regard to the
Animas-La Plata Project. Your decision to perform an SEIS, and to halt construction while
so doing, is a disservice to project proponents and the State of Colorado.

First. the method in which you made your decision is unacceptable to the State. When
the federal government insisted on cost-sharing the Animas-La Plata project, the State
acquired rights in decision making in order to assure project completion in accordance with
agreements signed by the United States and the State of Colorado. You stated on March
26, in a meeting which I attended, that you would not make the decision to perform an SEIS
without prior consultation with project proponents, and further that you would not take any
action which would slow project construction. The meeting with Roland Robison on April
16 was one in which he announced the Bureau's unilateral decision to halt construction,
perform an SEIS, and issue a press release confirming this decision that very afternoon. I
object not only to the content of that message, but also to the secretive and
unco=unicative manner in which you arrived at it.

Second, the Bureau's actions appear arbitrary, ill conceived and uninformed
particularly in regard to the decision to halt proposed FY 1993 project construction until the
pending SEIS is completed. The actions of the Bureau in stopping congressionally funded
construction activities is inexcusable. The timeline for compliance with the Indian Water
Rights Settlement Agreement does not accommodate your proposed delay which may
prevent the project to deliver water as promised to the Tribes.