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<br />" <br /> <br />ular, the tribes felt betrayed by the Department af the Interiar, <br />whose officials and agencies had sat at the negotiation table, <br />signed all the agreements, and supported all the necessary fed- <br />eral legislation and appropriations, only to reverse its position <br />at the last minute and refuse to construct ALP. The shack wave <br />from the decision did not stop with Calorado, New Mexico. and the <br />two Ute Tribes, however, since the analysis underlying the ALP <br />biological opinion logically extended to all projects and water <br />users in the San Juan River basin. The Navajo Nation, the <br />Jicarilla Apache Tribe, and every other water user in the San <br />Juan River basin became involved. <br />Once again COlorado, New Mexico and U.S. Bureau of Recla- <br />mation ("Bureau") officials began holding massive meetings with <br />affected Indian tribes (now four in number), and numerous munici- <br />palities, water conservancy districts and irrigators in south- <br />western Colorado and northwestern New Mexico. <br />On September 28, 1990, in an effort to avert the threatened <br />regional social and ecanamic disaster, the Bureau invited various <br />San Juan River basin water users and environmental interests to <br />the negotiation table to determine if a reasonable and prudent <br />alternative could be developed for ALP. The environmentalists <br />refused to join this effort. All other parties broke into three <br />teams, a biological team, a hydrological team and a legal team. <br />The primary objective of the biology team was to determine if an <br /> <br />-14- <br />