WSP03500

• File Number: 8220.106
• Description: Animas-La Plata
• State: CO
• Basin: San Juan/Dolores
• Water Division: 7
• Date: 7/21/1997
• Title: Agenda Item 18a Animas-La Plata Project and Romer/Schoettler Discussions - Status
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Board Memo

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IT IS TIME TO PULL THE PLUG
ON THE ANIMAS - LA PLATA PROJECT

It has now become clear that the Animas-La Plata project orthe U.S. Bureau ofReclarnatioll is
dead. After 30 years and $71 million in appropriations, even project supporters have recognized
that the project costs too much, is too great a burden on the environment and won't deliver what
was promised to the Ute tribes. In an effort to maintain the flow offederal doUars to tbe
. project, supporters bave now proposed a warmed over version of the project that is still
economically unjustifiable, requires a brand new form of federal subsidy, ..ill cost federal
taxpayers more than a quarter of a billion doUars, will continue to waste huge amounts of
electrical energy to pump water out of Colorado's Animas River and hundreds of feet up a
mountain, will continue to unnecessarily damage the environment, and now provides the
Ute Indian tribes with SUbstantially less water than originally promised. It is irresponsible
fiscal and water policy to cominue to fund a project that has been abandoned by all interests and
for which there is no defmed and authorized alternative. At this stage it is also premature and
fiscally irresponsible for Congress to appropriate money for any alternative that has not been
fully analyzed and authorized by Congress. As of June 30, 1997 there were $8.2 million of
unobligated funds in the ALP account. That is more than enough funding to undertake an effort
to revielO-' and identifY feasible alternatives.

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The alternative proposed by project supporters - The lI.nimas La Plata Reconciliation Plan -
raises several significant problems:

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Taxpayers and/or federal power users - not beneficiaries of ALP water - will
pay most of the ~b, CREATING A.l\i ENTIRELY NEW CLASS OF
FEDERAL SUBSIDIES.

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. Under long standing reclamation law, beneficiaries ofM&I water must repay all operational
and construction costs ....1th interest. But in a fundamental change, the constrUCtion costs of
the new project would be borne by federal taXpayers and/or consumers of federal hydropower
- a financing scheme unprecedented in the history of federal water projects.

. The non-federal contribution has been reduced from 28% to approximately 10% to 12% of
project costs, d'.Nindling from $231 million to only $29 million.. Federal taxpayers and/or
power users will be required to pay approximately $220 million to $270 ll"illion.

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Water allotted to the tribes is substantially reduced and is no more accessible
than it was in the original project.

. The proposed project substantially reduces tribal water allotments by approximately 40%.

. As in the original project, the reservoir holding ,vater allocated to the Ute tribes is still 1 0
miles from the nearest reservation and me new proposal does not include a delivery system to
supply the water to the Ute lands.