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~ ~ C'} N !::"'I o 170 J. ENERGY, NAT. Nt;/jUU1\v~O, & ~!"V u........ lVVI. ~oJ CUP, the changes were so radical to the Bureau "that they couldn't even go home and talk about it because it was completely out of their arena, >>52 Don Christiansen, General Manager of the District, de- scribed how the Bureau's interests pose obstacles to water refonn in general and were a barrier to the completion of the CUP in particular: i " :,J- I think that in the past the Bureau certainly has been detrimental and they have been very inflexible. The Bureau grew up being the water God of the West almost. They set the rules. They controlled it. They dictatorshipped the whole thing. It was very difficult for the kinds of flexibilities that we tried to build into the CUP . Completion Act to ever be developed with the Bureau. The things that we are trying to do are not even in their language." I:r f ~ In addition to complicating the negotiations, the Bureau tried to change several key aspects of the reauthorization legislation. During the hearings before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Commit- tee in September 1990, Reclamation Commissioner Dennis Underwood testified against the legislation, trying to undennine the compromise.... This infuriated Senator Jake Garn, who charged that the government had not kept its commitments to Utah.M Senator Garn ultimately had to lobby President Bush's Chief of Staff, John Sununu, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, and others, in order to secure the administra- tion's support for the CUP bilL56 Then, in 1992, out of "pique," the " Interview with Don Christiansen, supra note 2. II [d. He describes further the nature of the negotiations with the Bureau's officials: For a lot of things that we did, we invited the Bureau to come over and get involved. We would meet every two weeks, sometimes once a month, and the Bureau would come to the meeting. At the meeting they would sit down and open up their books and review the minutes that they took at the last meeting. We went on with that for a few months and finally asked ourselves why we keep inviting these guys to the meeting since they are adding nothing. We were spending half of the meeting reviewing what we did at the last meeting to bring those guys up to date, Id. 5-4 Commiuioner Underwood opposed some specific environmental mitigation projects and the tribal water settlement, and demanded that the Bureau retain oversight and final approval on all remaining work on the CUP. Central Utah Project Compktion Act: Hearing on S. 2969 Before tM Subcomm. on Water and Power of tM Senau Comm. on Energy and Natural Resource., 10lst Cong., 2d SeI.. 161-81 (1990) [hereinafter Hearing on S. 2969J (teetimony of Sen. Jake Gem). .. Id. at 133 (testimony of Sen, Jake Gem). .. Thomas H. Gorey, White Ho... Flip.Flop., BacM CUP, SALT LAKE TRm., Oct, 10, 1990, atA1.