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negotiate long-term water service agreements with Union Park type participants on both sides of the Divide. The Bureau knows that Union Park's additional high storage for Aspinall water rights will greatly increase clean water, power, and environmental benefits throughout Colorado and the Southwestern Region, including the Upper Gunnison Basin of origin. 7. Local. State. and federal involvement with Union Park oversiQht NECO first offered to sell its 1982 Union Park hydropower rights and statewide drought protection project to Colorado Springs, Aurora, Denver, City of Gunnison and the Colorado Water Resources and Power DeveJopmentAuthority (CWRPDA) during 1986. Colorado Springs and Aurora declined to consider Union Park, because it competed with their Homestake II and Collegate Range proposals, which do not include compensatory storage for the west slope. Denver also declined, because of a relentless determination to develop excessive Two Forks rights, which overdeplete Colorado River Mainstream tributaries. The City of Gunnison wisely contracted for a small interest in Union Park, because of major water and power benefits. CWRPDA recognized Union Park's statewide potential, but voted to first study the concept in its Upper Gunnison-Uncompahgre Basin Study of transmountain storage alternatives. Unfortunately, CWRPDA's half completed study was abruptly terminated by Colorado's Director of Natural Resources, without any public explanation or justification. As a result, the Bureau had to reallocate one million dollars in its FY 1990 budget, that was programmed to help Colorado develop its growing Gunnison Basin runoff losses to California. In spite of this setback, the Bureau did provide valuable cost estimates for Union Park and several other Gunnison transmountain alternatives. State officials have curiously refused to evaluate the Bureau's cost data and available Union Park reconnaissance studies by Ebasco, Black and Veatch, and WRC Engineering. . 8. Union Park vs Two Forks During the Two Forks EIS, Corps of Engineers computer studies confirmed that 60,000 acre-feet from Union Park could increase the safe annual yield of Denver's existing reservoirs by 111,000 acre-feet. Union Park's overall water and power benefits for multiple basins were never quantified. Regrettably, Union Park was subsequently dropped form the Two Forks EIS for unjustified "institutional reasons". EPA subsequently vetoed Two Forks, because "superior alternatives were improperly screened from the detailed environmental studies". Chips Barry (Colorado's Natural Resources Director) and Dave Miller (NECO President) were the only outsiders invited to the environmental community's Two Forks Victory Party. Environmental leaders knew we had key, but different, roles in EPA's veto process. Since Two Forks, Union Park and Colorado's vast untapped Gunnison Basin water losses have been intentionally "overlooked" by state water officials. . 9. Colorado's "Not one drop Gunnison Policv" After Two Forks, Colorado's Natural Resources Department Directors have quietly implemented an unauthorized, but de facto, "not one drop from the Gunnison policy". This self-defeating state policy was recently reflected in a telephone call from a Colorado Water Conservation Board member to a Bureau of Reclamation manager, indicating Bureau representatives were not welcome at CWCS's Statewide Water Supply Initiative (SWSI) scoping meetings, if they support Gunnison transmountain storage alternatives. Such covert behavior by a state official is a clear violation of his oath as a governor appointee to protect state water entitlements for all Coloradans. His call also sedously conflicts with the intent of NEPA, and damages free enterprise rights and innovation efforts. 3