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Western States Water Council Water Resources Committee Minutes Seattle, Washington July 14, 2005 . funding story. Those documents should be up on the web in 2-4 weeks. There will also be some background information and a sample letter of support for interested parties such as recreation groups to use. Dave Pope again explained that there were three separate proposed letters, and he clarified their purpose. He then went on to briefly mention yesterday's roundtable discussion. The point of the state portion of the roundtable discussion was primarily the USGS streamgaging program. Barney Austin of Texas talked about a current CWP review. The issue of costs per gage was raised. There was a suggestion by Hal Simpson that Colorado's state stream gaging system might serve as baseline for evaluating costs. Colorado has its own system and distribution of data, in addition to the CWP gages. Bob said he was willing to work on a base-line and what is included or not, as part of federal CWP costs, such as research and development, replacement costs, etc. He observed there are other eastern examples of states operating their own systems. The purpose of this potential effort would be to get better handle on streamgaging costs. Bob said, "The program is not sustainable on the current path." He offered to come to San Antonio to talk about costs, and shared work in a number of states. Dave Pope said, "Candidly, I would really hate to see a fragmented gaging network." There are . benefits to maintaining NSIP and CWP for consistency, quality control, access to data, etc. Otherwise, you could end up with 50 state programs. Larry Anderson raised his concern about where else within Interior's budget the money would come from. "It isn't going to be new money. I always have some difficulty with this type of resolution." Dave Pope observed, " My own view is CWP doesn't get a lot of attention." Weir added that this is a very important issue in Texas. "We supported the snow melt issue. This would really help us." Larry said that USGS is a large agency. "Could we suggest money come from some other USGS program." Dave: "I don't know, but we could say this isa priority program." Larry: "USGS in my humble opinion has made decisions to fund other programs with increased funding. I think USGS has created their own problem with our money. The leadership at USGS is the reason for the problem that we are in." Dave: "I don't...." Jack Stults: "Larry has a point. We could be more explicit." . 6