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The Upper Basins' Political Conundrum: A Deal is Not a Deal Colorado's net share of Colorado River water.... 11 years have gone by , since passage of the CRSP Act which was enacted to permit Upper Basin States to develop their full share of Colorado River water .... Yet ... Colorado to date. has received. authorization for projects- under the CRSP which consume a "grand" total of only 95 thousand acre-feet of water a year -- much less than has been authorized for any other Upper Basin State. The Five Fingers projects now stand ready for authorization. ,,,51 After over four years of legislative maneuvering, the Colorado River Basin Project Act emerged in 1968.82 It authorized the construction of the CAP for Arizona,83 as well as the "Five Fingers" projects for Colorado, the Uintah Unit of the Central Utah Project,84 and the Hooker Dam. Not coincidentally, the chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives, through which the legislation had to pass, was Congressman Wayne Aspinall, from Colorado's Western Slope. This act constituted the last major political agreement between the upper and lower basins over the authorization of federal reclamation projects. The very language of the statute illustrated the Upper Division States', particularly Colorado's, concerns about being, as it were, "left behind in the dust:" 81 THE COLORADO RIVER EDUCATIONAL FUND OF DENVER, COLORADO, FIVE FINGERS PROJECTS (no pagination and undated). This brochure was probably produced in 1967 during the 90th Congress' consideration of legislation (H.R. 3300 and S. 1242) to authorize the CAP. 82 Colorado River Basin Project Act, Pub. L. No. 90-537, 82 Stat. 885 (1968) (codified as amended in part at 43 U.S.C.A. §§ 1501-56 (1986 & Supp. 1997)). The politics and eventual passage of the Colorado River Basin Project Act were vastly more complicated and convoluted than is indicated in these few paragraphs. The interested reader can find an engagingly complete history in H. INGRAM, supra note 3, at 26-115. ~ Arizona, however, paid a price for the CAP's authorization in that it needed the votes of the California Congressional delegation to move the bill through Congress. California's price, among other things, was to get back from Arizona some of what it had lost in the 1963 Arizona v. California ruling. Section 301 of the act provides, in effect, that California's 4.4 million acre-feet has priority over diversions for the CAP in the event of shortages. Colorado River Basin Project Act, Pub. L. No. 90-537, § 301(b), 82 Stat. 887 (1968) (codified at 43 U.S.C.A. § 1521(b) (1986)). ~' Although authorized, construction of the Uintah Unit was conditioned on the requirement that a feasibility report first be completed and submitted to the Congress, together with certification from the Secretary of the Interior "... that, in his judgment, the benefits of such unit ... will exceed the costs and that such unit is physically and financially feasible ...." Colorado River Basin Project Act, Pub. L. No. 90-537, § 501(a), 82 Stat. 896 (1968). This requirement was then struck by the Congressional Reports Elimination Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-470, § 108(c), 94 Stat. 2239. 26 1 1 t t 1 ~~ fl [~