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001525 . . Upper Colorado River Commissioners December 31, 1992 Page 3 Mr. Israel advocates having a court revisit the 1922 Compact, 'apply his set of rules in an equitable apportionment case, preserve the 1922 Compact's alloca- tions to the two Basins but allow interstate water marketing and realize equitable development of the waters of the Colorado River. That is, money for the Upper Basin, and water for the Lower Basin. Such a scheme may sound ideal to Mr. Israel, but it does not conform to "realities," regional or otherwise. Mr. Israel also errs in his discussion of H.R. 429 on page 9 of his paper. He states that in this bill Congress "took specific steps to deauthorize a number of projects in the Upper Basin and "inserted sunset provisions on certain projects" (p. 9). It is true that Public Law 102-575 deauthorizes certain projects in the Upper Basin, but only "any Colorado River Storage Project participating project located in the State of Utah" for which (1) the Secre- tary of the Interior (Secretary) has not executed a cost-sharing agreement with the Central Utah Water Conservancy District for construction, and (2) the Secretary has not requested or Congress appropriated construction funds for the project (section 201(c)). It is true that the authorization of appropria- tion of funds for the "Uinta Basin Replacement Project" may "sunset" if the conditions in section 203 of Public Law 102-575 are not met. These replace- ment projects have significant local support and effectively replace a good deal of the depletions anticipated by the deauthorized projects. I don't believe there is any merit or reasonable process for attempting to set the record straight; however, after your review of the paper and our concerns we may wish to revisit the question. Please let us know of your concerns. WEC:pj ~.b Enclosure