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5 purpose of evaluating utility wheeling offers, On May 26, 1960 at a meet- ing of utility representatives and Bureau of Reclamation officials, the Bureau agreed that the "yardstick" system in order to provide a valid com- parison, must be sufficient within itself and be void of any interconnec- tions with existing or planned systems. The utilities' engineers have thoroughly studied this all-Federal "yardstick" system using the lat."st electronic computers and found that the system will not operate satisfactorily and is not an adequate yardstick with which to measure any type of electric operation. I am willing to wager that the Bureau will never build this system. Instead, they will have to build a more expensive system. They have admitted that the system will not be built as laid out. In contrast to the inadequate all-Federal system the combination system, Figure 2, will provide a high degree of service continuity and meets all the requirements set by the Secretary for the Project. The Bureau proceeded to make their evaluation of the wheeling offers, and on January 17,' 1961, the Secretary of Interior announced the results of the Bureau's analysis which rejected the utilities' cooperative proposal for transporting project power. In spite of the fact that the utilities requested permission to review the Bureau's report, they were not allowed to see the results until after the Secretary's reconnnendation for an all-Federal system had been made. The Secretary's reconnnendation was based on a comparison of the effect of the all-Federal "yardstick" system and the effect of a combination utility and Federal transmission system on the Project payout and irrigation assistance. The Bureau endeavored to give its report a cloak of respecta- bility by employing two engineering consultants to review their analysis. The ten days alloted these consultants was not ample time to adequately study this complex problem. In spite of this limited time, these engineers did not "rubber stamp" the Bureau's report and pointed out numerous dis- crepancies on the analysis. The Bureau analysis showed a large decrease in irrigation assist- ance if the utilities' proposal is accepted. The Bureau further showed that it would take a 10% increase in power rates to provide the same irri_ gation assistance, The investor-owned utilities take exception to the methods used by the Bureau in making their comparison and believe that a complete anal- ysis using the same basic criteria for both systems shows that the combi- nation system provides by a large margin the greatest benefits to the area, the Federal government and the nation as a whole. The Bureau's report showed that, in spite of their statement that the "yardstick" system was sufficient without interconnection, the system which they used was no longer devoid of interconnections. In order to pro- vide a minimum operable system, the Bureau took advantage of the large steam systems of the Public Service Company of Colorado and the Pacific Power and Light Company through the interconnections with the Western Division of the Missouri River Basin Power systems. They further assumed that some 600 miles of REA transmission lines would be constructed and