BOARD00101

• Board Meeting Date: 7/26/1999
• Description: Colorado River Basin Issues - Grand Canyon Protection Act - Adaptive Management Program Status Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

Department's views the GCPA as amending the "Law of the River" and adding to the authorized .

purposes of Glen Canyon Dam and Reservoir. In response, the Department invited interested
parties to provide comments and revised the guidance document. The Workgroup (referred to by
the Department as the "AMWG," pronounced "am-wig") had several weeks to review and
discuss the revised draft prior to this meeting and acquiesced in its completion with the following
paragraph summarizing the resolution of our principle point of contention:

One area that has been a source of recent discussion has been the question of planned high
releases from Glen Canyon Dam for such purposes as "beach habitat building flows," The
Department expects the AMWG to work and provide its recommendations within the following
context. Since the GCP A is clear that it was not intended to modify the compacts or "the
provisions of the Colorado River Storage Projects Act of 1956 and the Colorado River Basin
Projects Act of 1968 that govern allocation, appropriation, development and exportation of the
waters of the Colorado River Basin" (GCPA, section 1802(b)), any operational changes under the
auspices of the GCP A are clearly subordinate to and must fit within the constraints of those
provisions, Historically, there have been differences of legal opinion over some related
issues, such as whether releases of water above power plant capacity, if made for authorized
purposes, can be considered as not constituting "spills" within the meaning of section 602(a)
of the Colorado River Basin Project Act of 1968, and more recently over whether the GCP A
"amends" the Law of the River by adding additional authorized purposes for the operation
of Glen Canyon Dam. These legal issues have not been finally resolved, but given the
limitations provided in the ROD, the Glen Canyon Dam Operating criteria, and the 1996
agreement between the Department and the Basin States, it is hoped they need not be.
Clearly, Section 7 of the CRSPA, which directs the Secretary" to produce the greatest practicable
amount of power and energy that can be sold at finn power and energy rate" provided that the
primary purposes of compact deliveries and state compact allocation development are not .
precluded or impaired, remains in effect, even though the GCPA (section 1809) authorized, and
the EISIROD implemented, an incremental reduction in the value of the hydropower resource.
Under the conditions of those documents (the ROD, operating criteria and the 1996 agreement),
flows above power plant capacity would be conducted using reservoir releases required for dam
safety purposes, The Department is currently focussing on operational modifications at release
levels below 45,000 cfs, Modifications to the operating criteria involving flows above 45,000 cfs
would require additional NEPA compliance." (emphasis added)

With the completion of these two efforts (i.e., the Workgroup's vision statement and the
Department's guidance document), the Workgroup will turn its attention to the development of
strategic goals and revision of management objectives in the next six months while many aspects
of ongoing research and monitoring continue. The Workgroup gave conceptual approval to an
overall budget of $7.85 million but agreed to reserve judgement on the details until better

information concerning the agencies requests and information needs is available later this year.
The other aspect of this program that we will watch most carefully is the development of an

"experimental flow" protocol that will set up a series of reservoir release scenarios and serve as
the basis future research.

Randy Seaholm will continue representing Colorado in the technical workgroup and we
will coordinate future policy issues with you based upon discussion with other basin states'

representatives and program participants. If you would like copies to the vision statement or
guidance document (or any other program documents), please let us know"
Attachment
cc: Randy Seaholm .
Jennifer Gimbel
Carol Angel

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