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<br />. <br /> <br />During the early 1980s, two of the world's leading engineering firms (Ebasco Services and Black <br />& Veatch) worked with Natural Energy Resources Company to develop Colorado's unused <br />Gunnison and Aspinall Pool rights for statewide needs. Their innovative Union Park Pumped- <br />Storage Project Feasibility Study was first offered to Gunnison and Colorado water leaders in <br />1986. As a result of this study, local Gunnison water leaders requested the Colorado Water <br />Resources and Power Development Authority to help evaluate the Upper Gunnsion Basin's <br />potential transmountain diversion alternatives. <br /> <br />The Bureau of Reclamation assisted with this Water Authority evaluation. Nineteen Bureau <br />transmountain options were studied for developing the Bureau's Aspinall Pool rights for <br />Colorado's statewide needs. The Authority's Phase I Upper Gunnison-Uncompahgre Basin <br />Study was released in 1989. State officials quietly canceled the Phase II evaluation of Union <br />Park and other promising transmountain options, because oflocal activists threats. This <br />cancellation forced the Bureau to reallocate one million dollars within its FY 1990 budget, which <br />were intended to help Colorado develop its Aspinall Pool and Colorado River rights. <br /> <br />Recent engineering studies by Ueblacker Associates and WRC Engineering indicate up to 1.2 <br />million acre feet of Colorado's undeveloped Aspinall Pool entitlements can be safely pumped <br />into Union Park's high altitude off river storage site. These saved Colorado River Compact <br />waters can then be delivered via gravity systems, when and where needed, for eities, farms, and <br />river environments, during the critical drought cycles. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />Most Western water projects were constructed on free flowing rivers to benefit limited down <br />stream areas. These traditional storage projects typically had 2 to I benefit-cost expectations. <br />The pumped-storage project, now known as the Central Colorado Project (CCP), would combine <br />the best features of Union Park's high storage with the Bureau's existing Taylor Park and Blue <br />Mesa Reservoirs. Union Park will be filled with reversible pump generators during spring flood <br />seasons, when surplus water and low cost power are readily available. CCP's advanced pump- <br />storage facilities can also be used to generate high value peaking power for the western power <br />grid, when not being used for flexible statewide drought protection. <br /> <br />CCP's unprecedented drought protection concept will integrate existing storage systems, and <br />increase the utility and quality of finite western water supplies throughout the new millennium. <br />Its multiple eeonomic and environmental advantages for the Gunnison, Upper Colorado, South <br />Platte, Arkansas, and Rio Grande River Basins could yield benefit-east expectations as high as <br />10 to I, if properly evaluated. CCP's incentives for cooperation will surely trump the endless <br />infighting that is flushing Colorado's farming economy and river environments to Califomia. <br /> <br />_fully, 2006 will be. goody=fu'X~lorndO" wo,,, furure, <br /> <br />Dave Miller, strategic water planner <br />P.O. Box 567, Palmer Lake, CO 80133 <br />719-481-2003 Fax 719-481-3452 <br />