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salmon. Cocanee salmon was introduced into Blue Mesa. Originally, the fish were hatched at the hatchery and then trucked down and dumped into Blue Mesa. When the fish spawned, the spawn would have to be collected from the tributaries and inlets of Blue Mesa, and taken back to the hatchery where they were raised. In order to eliminate transportation costs and the extra work involved, the fish were released from the hatchery and when the salmon were ready to spawn they returned to the hatchery. An interesting side note is that when the Division of Wildlife decided that they wanted to release those fish they requested me, as a diverter from the Gunnison River, to shut my ditch off. I felt that was an infringement upon my rights to use my private property right to irrigate for the benefit of the public. So, the young fish go to reservoir and four years later they come back to the hatchery to spawn. Guess what all those salmon in the East River have brought about? A great collection of an endangered species; the bald eagle. The eagles migrate through the area in the fall and have a great time surviving on those .salmon. The Trampe family owns a piece of property just down stream from the hatchery. We have it closed to the public for a variety of reasons. It is not uncommon in the fall to see 100 eagles. I enjoy them as everyone else does. However, you do not find many eagles on the hatchery property because it is open to the public. You also do not find many eagles on the property just downstream of our property because it is full of homes, fisherman and all kinds of other activities. Three years ago, a Division of Wildlife officer arrived at my back door one evening and said, "Trampe, how come you been killing eagles? Where is the dead cow that is poisoned and is killing all the eagles?" All you can do is take my word for it, but I am certainly not about to do anything like that. It is not the species that bothers me. It is all these other things that bother me. It is these sidelights that bother me, and make it difficult for me to live with the Endangered Species Act and its administration. I am constantly, in the course of the fall and the winter, accused of bothering the eagles. I am constantly accused of not wanting to allow the public to enjoy them. Perhaps I ought to open that property up to the public, and then we would not have them and my life would be much easier. The environmental community keeps telling the ranching industry and the agricultural industry that we are doing a bad job of protecting the e.nvironment. If so, why are the eagles there? Another thing that came about after Blue Mesa was built is what we call in the Gunnison Basin the 1975 Contract. The 1975 Contract arose to help alleviate the water administration problem that we had to deal with in the 1950's and 1960's. I think the first part of the development of this contract was an agreement between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Uncompaghre Water Users that there would be an. exchange between Taylor Reservoir and Blue Mesa. This would allow Uncompaghre to call their storage out of Blue Mesa rather than Taylor to decrease the distance and the time of delivery. As an outgrowth of that, the Upper Gunnison people saw an opportunity to enter the negotiation and better their situation. To make a long story short, the Colorado River Water Conservation District became involved, along with the Bureau of Reclamation and we called it the Four Party Agreement. It allows the Upper Gunnison 89