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,j l, 002341 . . completion of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Colorado River Interim Surplus Criteria. The next meeting of the Colorado River Management Work Group scheduled for July 7111 was canceled, Not seeing agreement, Reclamation requested comments concerning the 200 I AOP for next the meeting to be held on August 16, 2000, Central Arizona Project On May 3'd, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District (CA WCD) and the United States agreed to a negotiated Settlement over the reimbursable costs for building the 336-mile long Central Arizona Project (CAP). The Settlement among other things, fixed CA WCD's repayment obligation at $1,65 billion and provided 665,224 acre-feet of CAP water for federal purposes to be used for Indian water right settlement in Arizona, On June 23'd, Reclamation issued for public review and comment, a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) that includes the environmental analysis necessary to implement the Settlement. Three alternative allocation scenarios and a no Federal action alternative are described in the DElS, Public comments will be accepted for a 60-day period, until August 25, 2000. Excess Deliveries Non-Minute excess deliveries to Mexico during calendar year 2000 have been high, For the period January through May, 2000, non-Minute excess deliveries have total 88,995 acre-feet. For the period 1968-1977, such deliveries through May averaged 11,463 acre-feet. During months when no flood releases are made, no precipitation events occur, and Senator Wash Reservoir is operating as intended, the average non-Minute excess release has been approximately 400 acre-feet per month. Several factors have caused the high excess releases during 2000. First is the dredging above Morelos Dam to remove the large silt load deposited during the 1993 Gila River flood. The water surface elevation above Morelos Dam is 105 feet during normal operating periods. The dredge requires a water surface elevation of 108 feet to operate properly, While the inlet gates to Alamo Canal can be operated so as to take Mexico's requested flow with the water surface elevation at 108 feet, Reclamation operating personnel must deliver more water in case the channel does not react as expected. At the normal delivery elevation of 105 feet, Reclamation knows the channel's configuration, thereby being able to judge how much water to release upstream to meet the delivery objective. 108 feet presents a new channel, one which the Bureau does not know, so extra water is released to make sure that elevation 108 is maintained to keep the dredge from bottoming out, and to make sure Mexico's requests are met. On the day the barge was launched, elevation 109 was reached using a large release which spilled over Morc\os Dam, Another factor which has affected excess releases to Mexico is the revised operation of Senator Wash reservoir. The dam is currently in a restricted operation mode for safety reasons due to increased groundwater seepage beneath the Dam, Senator Wash will be field tested for about three months beginning in July 2000, with the need to keep the reservoir's water surface elevation constant for weeks at a time to determine seepage rates at different storage volumes. So the reservoir cannot be used for its sole purpose, to store excess flows above Imperial Dam for release when scheduled releases from Parker Dam are less than needed to meet downstream demands, More water will have to be released from Parker Dam to make sure demands are met. And, a third factor for excess releases to Mexico this year are the usual infrequent 3